In this celebration of a birth, still so many birds of death flit through the shadowy bushes of the hymns. The pageant brings a welcome lightness with its tender comedy of confident older kids and uncertain younger ones. Glittery cardboard angels’ wings and cotton-ball sheeps’ wigs are as real as they need to be, and the three kings’ recitation, out-of-sync unison, makes everyone fond. Irrespective of the holiday, the crop of bright faces and attendant parents beaming encouragement are the substance of this occasion.

Once more, as with every Christmas, we see set before us the ark of generation, each child as miraculous as the infant Jesus. We all start from this place and move outward through the rings of life, always growing closer to that outer edge of mystery, for which we silently prepare. Sometimes it all rises before us as in a dream, or a pageant. No one really knows what it is in the end, unless the end should happen to be any moment to which we are truly present, together and unafraid, letting ourselves feel love.

Thomas R. Smith spent his first 18 years on the Chippewa River in Cornell. He now lives near the Kinnickinnic River in River Falls where he writes and teaches online for the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent books are Medicine Year (poetry) and Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival(essays). He posts poems and blogs at thomasrsmithpoet.com.