What is the texture of Christmas?

Once grief plays a part in Christmas it is a bittersweet gathering where absences are as much a part of the festivities as are the real world participants. The trick to making those sadnesses more bearable is to see them for what they are, a deep reflection of love that has been lost. Then those memories can sit more comfortably with the messy, overwhelming, joyous, communal event that this Christmas is.

Christmas was celebrated in our home with four families gathering from different parts of the world. Small cousins squeezed together in a hallway when normally thousands of miles separate them.

There will always be thousands of miles between some of our family members but they make their presence felt in different ways.

Merry Christmas.