Story of the Month

by me

The Visit of Christmas Eve

A Tale for the Season

I must tell you of Christmas Eve, though you think you know her already. You have marked her on your calendars, circled her in red, anticipated her arrival with the eagerness of children awaiting gifts. But I tell you truly, you do not know her at all.

She is not what you imagine.

While the great Santa Claus receives all the world’s attention, all its songs and stories, all its wonder and belief, Christmas Eve moves through the darkness like a whisper, like a held breath, like the space between heartbeats. She is discreet where he is jolly. She is mysterious where he is known. She is unsung, and perhaps just perhaps that is precisely as it should be.

For Christmas Eve does not come with fanfare.

She arrives in the afternoon’s fading light, when shadows grow long, and the world begins to slow its frantic pace. She slips through doorways left slightly ajar, moves along streets where lights begin to twinkle, touches the frost on windows with fingers gentle as prayer. She brings with her no bag of toys, no reindeer bells, no Ho-ho-ho to announce her presence.

What does she bring, you ask?

Preparation. Anticipation. The subtle magic of becoming.

Where she walks, hearts begin to open. Old grievances seem suddenly small. Family members traveling from distant places find their journeys smoothed, their impatience transformed to eagerness. In kitchens, hands that have been hurried all day slow their work, finding rhythm and even joy in the rolling of dough, the stirring of pots, the setting of tables with care.

This is her doing, though none credit her for it.

Christmas Eve touches the child who cannot sleep and whispers, “Rest will make tomorrow sweeter.” She steadies the father’s hand as he assembles the bicycle in the garage at midnight. She guides the mother who wraps the last gift with tears in her eyes, remembering her own mother who did the same. She settles over households like a blanket, bringing with her a peculiar peace, not the peace of silence, but the peace of rightness, of things falling into their proper places.

She is the curator of togetherness, the architect of gathering.

Watch her work, if you can catch sight of her at all. See how she moves through the grandmother’s house where three generations will soon arrive, adjusting a picture frame here, straightening a wreath there, her presence ensuring that every detail speaks of welcome. Observe her in the humble apartment where a single parent has done their best with little, how she makes the simple decorations glow with worthiness, with enough-ness.

Christmas Eve knows a secret that Santa, for all his magic, does not: the gift is not in the giving alone, but in the space created for giving to occur. She is that space. She is the pause before the celebration, the breath before the song, the darkness that makes the morning light so precious.

And yet, and here is the peculiar sadness of her station, the night does not belong to her.

It belongs to the families she has prepared. It belongs to the children she has helped to settle. It belongs to the lovers who walk hand-in-hand through snow-dusted streets, to the friends who gather for cocoa and carols, to all the souls she has gently guided toward each other. She creates the conditions for bonding, for feasting, for festivities and games and laughter, for the spreading of that particular fullness that only this night can bring.

Then she withdraws.

She is too humble to remain where she is not the center, too wise to intrude upon what she has helped to create. Unlike Santa, who arrives with spectacle and departs with legend, Christmas Eve simply…fades. She becomes the background hum, the atmospheric blessing, the forgotten architect of the very magic others will remember.

By morning, all will speak of Christmas. Of Santa’s visit, of gifts exchanged, of the meal shared. But who will remember Christmas Eve? Who will credit her patient work, her subtle preparations, her quiet transformation of ordinary hours into sacred time?

Very few. Perhaps none at all.

And yet she returns, year after year, faithful as the turning of the calendar, constant as the winter dark. She asks for no songs, no cookies left out, no tracking of her progress across the globe. She requires no belief to do her work; she simply does it, for the work itself, for the love of what comes after.

So tonight, when the sun sets, and that particular hush begins to fall, when you feel the air change and something inexplicable stir in your chest that is her. That is Christmas Eve, making her rounds, weaving her gentle enchantments, preparing the way for all that is to come.

She is the guiding star of anticipation itself.

She is real, though unheralded. She is present, though unseen. She is the living embodiment of service without recognition, of giving without receiving, of magic worked for its own pure sake.

And if you listen very carefully, in that space between afternoon and night, between the ordinary day and the extraordinary one to come, you might just hear her not speaking, for she is too discreet for that, but breathing. Hoping. Blessing.

Working her quiet wonders while the world waits for someone else entirely.

That is Christmas Eve. That is her story.

And now you know her, just a little better than before.

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