Look around and within to summon Christmas spirit
It took me a while this year, but I'm finally in the Christmas spirit, just in the nick of time. I don't know if it was the mobs lining up outside stores at midnight on Thanksgiving or the candy canes that began appearing on shelves around Halloween. Whatever it was, it turned me off to a holiday I normally love.
Maybe it's the thought of so much excess during this sad and scary season of war, or maybe it's knowing that there is so much suffering -- not just in places like Iraq and Darfur, but right here in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, knowing that so many mothers won't have their sons around this Christmas because of the street violence that makes no exceptions for the holiday season.
Several years ago, I interviewed Bill McKibben, the environmental writer who wrote a book called "The $100 Christmas." In it, he reminded readers whose birthday was being celebrated -- certainly not theirs -- and suggested several ways to simplify what has become a grabfest.
At this time of year, I think of people like McKibben and Tom White, the millionaire developer whose largesse helped get the now world-renowned Partners In Health off the ground in 1987 to help the poorest AIDS victims in Haiti. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago, his goal in life was to give every cent of his fortune to the needy by the time he dies. Now in his mid-80s, he is well on his way to doing just that.
I think of the Tufts graduate students I accompanied to New Orleans, where they spent their spring break gutting Katrina-wrecked houses by day and sleeping in FEMA tents at night. I think of the Rev. Miniard Culpepper, who is fasting until the killer of Jahmol Norfleet, the gang leader turned peacemaker, is arrested. I think of the Rev. Bill McCarthy, who started Father Bill's Place in Quincy to feed and shelter the down and out -- despite neighborhood howls of protest.
I think of the former Merrimack, N.H., football team, whose star center was stricken with the horrific Huntington's disease. Now in their 30s, these young men have founded a nonprofit organization devoted to making Jason Hilton's limited life more comfortable -- and to researching a cure. I think of people like Stefan Nathanson, a Newton lawyer who started the Room To Dream Foundation, which provides cheery makeovers to bedrooms and hospital waiting rooms for chronically ill children. I think of the folks at Cradles to Crayons in Quincy, who take new and almost-new toys, appliances, and clothing and recycle them for children in need. I think of all the Girl Scouts who cut off their hair to provide wigs for cancer-stricken children, and I think of 13-year-old Lizzie Ayoub of Milton who made a CD and has raised more than $5,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
I think of how lucky I am to get to meet these everyday heroes, who do their good deeds quietly ( until a reporter comes knocking). They humble me, and help keep me grounded in this crazy season. They remind me of Gandhi's suggestion to "be the light that you want to see in this world." Or, as my favorite bumper sticker proclaims: "Be the person your dog thinks you are."
On the flip side, I think of the people I saw as I stood outside Borders in Braintree recently, panhandling for Globe Santa, which provides toys for hundreds of needy children. Though many people stopped and gave, others rushed right by, afraid to even make eye contact with us "elves." What would it take to smile and put a buck in the box?
As I wished one cheerless man who strode by a Merry Christmas, he snarled, "OK."
OK?
In my household, Christmas is simple: Our kids are growing up. No more leaving cookies and milk by the fireplace, no more 3-year-olds rushing into our bedroom at 3 a.m. exclaiming, "I just heard Dasher on the roof!" No more little ones getting up before dawn to see what Santa brought. Nowadays, we parents are the ones waking the kids up; otherwise, they'd sleep right through.
My daughter is in college now, and arrives home today, after studying on two different continents for the past two semesters. Megan made us promise to wait until today to make our annual mountain of Christmas cookies, her grandmother's recipe. Granny has arrived from Indiana, toting her secret recipe, along with her trusty fudge pan. (It turns out the most delicious fudge.)
We are not a white light kind of family. The 3-foot-tall plastic Santa is standing sentry in a second-story window, with a large plastic candy cane by his side. At night, both light up and can be seen from a block away. If the neighbors object, they're too polite to say anything (except for one guy, and he moved away).
In our kitchen window still sits a stuffed animal that sings "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer." Next to that is a Santa Claus who shakes his hips and sings "Jingle Bell Rock." That was in my mother's room as she began her slide into dementia, and it always gives me both a pang and a smile. In the dining room is the holiday "log cabin" built entirely of corks by our friend Paul, who swears that each cork represents a bottle of wine that he drank. That's a lot of wine.
This year, we will send out New Year's cards instead of Christmas cards. It's one way to slow things down a little, to make a hectic holiday less so.
Tonight, we'll attend a candlelight church service and, if my children will indulge us once again, listen to Dylan Thomas read "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It is beautiful, funny, poignant, and evocative of Christmas in a much simpler time and place. On Christmas Day, friends will come for dinner; Lars ensures his place at the table by bringing me a box of my favorite chocolates. We will be Catholic and Protestant, agnostic and atheist.
At dessert, we'll open up "The Dysfunctional Family Christmas Songbook" and pick such favorites as "Grandpa's Drunk" to the tune of "Jingle Bells," and the paean to Martha Stewart, "We Must Have a Perfect Christmas" to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
These traditions remind us to celebrate life in all its beauty and despair, to give thanks and to make a joyful noise.
Merry Christmas!
Columnist Bella English of Milton can be reached at: english@globe.com 
