Home for the Holidays

Do you have travel plans for Christmas?  My family has gone through a bit of transition since our father passed away.  Last year was the first year that we did not spend some part of Christmas day together.  Our new tradition is to gather on the Saturday after Christmas at my brother’s house in Pennsylvania. 

There is a true spirit of joy that grows as each person walks through the door and is greeted with cheer --  from Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, and wherever life has taken us since last Christmas.  Although time and distance keep us apart more than we are together, our Christmas gathering is a reminder that the family roots our parents cultivated run strong and deep.  We are blessed.

Coming from a large family makes it difficult for me to relate to Pier Giorgio’s experience of Christmas.  With a such a small immediate family, I would have thought that the Frassatis would have made every effort to spend the day together.  But, from Pier Giorgio’s letters, we can see that this was not the case.

For example, when he was 20 years old, his father was the ambassador to Germany.  His parents spent Christmas in Berlin while Pier Giorgio stayed in Turin.  His mother sent him a box of chocolates as a Christmas gift.

“You cannot imagine how happy I was not for the chocolates but because that object given in the name of my dear Mama shortened for a moment the long distance that separates us.”

He spent Christmas day studying “a bit of mechanics” and had dinner plans with his friends as well as keeping his Grandmother Frassati company for a little while.
 
The next year, the situation was reversed!  He stayed in Berlin when his parents left to spend Christmas in Turin.

“I am staying here in the beautiful city, partly unhappy about not spending the Holy Feast with my family, but partly happy about being able to spend it with my German friends.”

He left at 10:44 pm by train on Christmas night to travel around Germany and Poland alone.  He was 21. 

I get a little sad when I think of him on the train going from place to place without any family or friends during the Christmas season.  But a couple of years later, he wrote to a German friend, “I always think with joy of the Christmases I spent in Germany.” So, he was happy with his travels and that's good enough for me.

Whether your plan is like mine - to spend Christmas in a noisy house with nearly all of your nine brothers and sisters and 40 nieces and nephews – or like Pier Giorgio’s – to spend Christmas on a train alone in Europe, let us remember the greatest journey of all:

“In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us.” (Luke 1:78)

In these last few days of Advent, let us prepare our hearts to welcome this humblest of travellers. Come, O come, Emmanuel.


Verso l'alto!  ///cmw