Making deals with God — and Santa — at Christmastime

I’m writing from the First United Methodist Church.

The Cranors are here for the Candlelight Service. We’re sitting in the second to last row, the same place I’ve sat for as far back as I can remember. I’m writing on the inside flap of a torn-apart donation envelope.

When I was my kids’ age, I used to tear similar envelopes open and draw in them. Sometimes, I’d draw the altar lined now with poinsettias, or maybe the 20-foot-tall tree — the same tree fellow back-row Methodist Danny Tucker has been graciously decorating for decades.

I love this place. I love this service, too.

In a few more minutes, the sanctuary lights will dim and the members of the choir will come down from their loft. They’ll sing “Silent Night” as they move into the aisles, carrying candles like the one in my son’s hands now. A moment ago, he held the wax cylinder like a dagger and jabbed the wick at his sister.

When the choir finally shares their light with the congregation, I’ll have to help my son hold his candle, the same way my parents used to help me.

One year, a bit of melted wax slipped through the plastic guard. I remember the heat. How my mother tried to take the candle from me, but I wouldn’t let go. I wouldn’t even lower my hand. I’d made some sort of deal with myself, with God and maybe Santa Claus, too.

I was always making deals back then. If I made five free throws in a row, then Emma Lee would kiss my cheek beneath the green slide during after-lunch recess. If I kept my hand up for the entirety of “Silent Night,” then Santa would leave a Nintendo 64 beneath my tree on Christmas morning.

There was more to this particular candle deal than Christmas gifts. There were questions already forming in my 9-year-old mind, attempts to reconcile the stories I’d been told: the manger, the wise men, immaculate conception, and how what I’d learned in Sunday School related to a jolly old elf who lived at the North Pole.

As the wax cooled between my knuckles, my mother finally let go, but I didn’t. I kept my hand up until the overhead lights clicked back on and Mom leaned over, blowing out my candle before asking, “What was that about?”

I looked up at her, like I would for only a few more Christmases, until I grew taller than she, taller, even, than my father, and said, “I don’t know.”

Ambiguous though it was, there was truth behind my answer. My youth was filled with questions and back-row deals and torn-apart envelopes, their flaps covered in my scribbles. All these years later, the questions remain as I sit here once again, in the same place I was 25 Christmases ago.