Heaven When We’re Home

Today in the snow-dark of night, I took a walk and listened to the Wailin’ Jennys’ song “Heaven When We’re Home”. And I am, home.

Today my brothers and sisters and I took out the artificial Christmas tree from the basement and began filling its naked branches with ornaments. The decorated tree is a volume of our family history. Some ornaments came from my parents from their parents, others once belonged to our grandparents.

Each of us kids (and there are ten of us!) have ornaments that we made as kids. There are painted snowman, clay Santa Clauses, felt Christmas trees. My younger siblings are still adding to this history as they create new ornaments out of their imagination.

Each ornament triggers memories and causes to say, “Oh remember when. . . ”

Despite the ways our corporate world has turned Christmas into a parade of consumerism, Christmas in families across the world is still preserved.

I felt like I’ve made a journey to get here. After leaving my current home of Guatemala, I stopped off in DC, NYC and Minneapolis, and finally my bus pulled into Bismarck, North Dakota in the earliest hours of the morning.

This last year has been busier, hectic and wonderful. But I give thanks for a holiday in which my many siblings, some of us spread across the country and in my case in another country, to take planes, buses and cars pointed towards the house we all grew up in. This is Christmas, and as the Wailin’ Jennys melodiously put it, it feels like heaven to be here among “my people.”

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