Christmas Day has always carried with it the semblance of the paradoxies we hold most dear. We celebrate the Savior of the world come born in a stable trough. We celebrate the birth of a King whose gift of eternal life was manifest in His own death. And we celebrate the birth of this new life on one of the darkest days of the calendar year. A recently discovered paradoxy of Christmas day is the unassembled "gift".
We are all gathered in Illinois this year for Bug's family gathering. The girls are eating up every second of it. Our friend Freddie is here from Albania, by way of Boston where he is studying at the Fletcher School at Tufts. The authentic vanOrman Christmas will occur tomorrow, upon the arrival of the rest of the family, but today, for good measure, Tua and Pip were allowed to open two presents. They came unassembled and Freddie and I spent most of Christmas day flummoxed. The directions were written in a dialect of English which was foriegn to me. At the end of the day though, there was a new easel and kitchen set which were both met, like all new gifts on Christmas day, with about as much sheer joy as the indifference that followed.
