And of course, the Three Wise Men were guided, not by the sun, but by a star.

The legends have grown both beautiful and fanciful. Yet they have never drifted out of the darkness into a premature daylight. They have stayed quite close to the inner truth from which they draw their substance: the truth that man must find his faith, not in the daylight but in the dark. If he is ever to come to the light of morning, he must carry his own light with him through the night.

He must make his songs in the darkness, too, and sing them first at midnight. He must proclaim in the desert a highway when there is no way at all -- not even a path or a trail. He must, and evidently he can.

That is the ground of hope: that he can. Not as a gesture of empty defiance -- that would be only pathetic -- but as an act of assurance; a trumpeting of the soul's final certainty. Here is something that goes right back to the beginning, farther than thought can reach, back into the primitive from which we come. Here is something that journeys through the centuries, borne by the faith and courage of the race. Here is something that beckons to us also from the future, that belongs to the very nature of the human spirit, because it belongs to the nature of life itself.

Brotherhood -- we betray it, but we cannot forsake it. Love -- we disown it, but we cannot renounce it.

And the dream? -- even in the hour of treason, it reclaims us. There is a song that sings it at midnight.

[by A. Powell Davies, "Christmas Always Begins at Midnight", 1946]

Christmas was quiet and perfect here, in this crumbling 100-year old house in Wheaton, with the addition of Sula, beautiful in a white crocheted dress given to her by her Mexican father.

Everyone liked my Thai gifts: Natalie got red fisherman pants and an antique wood clothes hanger, which she loved. My parents got a book about Thai culture with wonderful photographs, and a Buddha statue I bought at a street stand while an actual monk was browsing nearby. My brother got a T-shirt with a design of the monkey king from the Thai Ramayana, which he promptly put on.

I didn't get many presents because no one knew I was coming, which was fine. I like giving more than getting. My dad got me the new Joanna Newsom CD (he is finally admitting that some current music is worth listening to). Natalie got me a Neko Case CD and "Race" by Studs Terkel. My mom got me two Somerset Maugham books and "Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser. After "The Idiot" and "Of Human Bondage", which I loved, I decided I should read her favorite books more often. My aunt Bonnie got me a gift certificate with a card that said, "Buy some warm clothes!"

My brother got me two Dylan CDs because he is obsessed with Dylan right now. It's funny, I went through that phase when I was 14 but he was oblivious at the time. His taste is finally getting a bit closer to mine. He got a guitar from my parents and I taught him to play E and Am. It was cute, like hearing a baby say its first words.

Then we had a vegan dinner and even my grandmother liked the cashew gravy. Natalie is a genius cook.

That was my dad's side of the family. We also went to visit my mother's sister and father in Forest Park. My grandfather is 93 but still has all his wits as well as a sharp Italian sense of humor: a dry, resigned sarcasm. My brother videotaped while my aunt and my grandfather bickered about the particular translation of a Russian phrase my grandmother and her sisters used to say.

We think it means "She could cook, but she couldn't serve," but no one is sure because the sisters only ever said it in Russian, and then collapsed giggling. They were five coal-miner's daughters who married a Greek, an Italian, an Englishman, a Pole, and a Frenchman.

Now we are back at my aunt Bonnie's house (father's side) and everyone is playing scrabble and listening to Mozart. My aunt's new boyfriend is here (she is recently divorced after 25 years of marriage). She said to Natalie, "I just want someone who appreciates classical music!"

My dad is telling stories about my discerning taste in furniture as a 4-year old. Sula is obsessed with phones, but only ones that are currently working; she won't accept substitutes.