Pick me up and turn me round.

"'Twas the night after Christmas, when all through the house

  Not a creature was stirring, not even Mouse."

My favorite Christmas carols are some of the most solemn ones: "Still, Still, Still" "Silent Night" "Carol of the Bells."

For it is Christmas: a time to love. Ah yes, love's love is to linger. To haunt. To surreptitiously remind that we all are ensnared in its very ether--with all of its good, and of all the times we have turned away from it.

It is, really, no surprise that I am enthralled with ghosts--one might even say tantalized; so, following in suit, I have read and re-read A Christmas Carol repeatedly throughout my life. O yes, and I have watched it tirelessly. I will take it in any guise I can: animated form, Bill Murray form, muppet form, etc., etc. Its eerie old man/baby/flame Ghost of Christmas Past (which is always the creepiest), the angel/pagan god/Father Christmas/laughing Ghost of Christmas Present, and the old-fashioned/enshrouded/phantom Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come all cloud my soul this time of year.

All this and more awaits me in the cry of a train which will always Send me in the quiet of Christmas nights forevermore. It is the train that I can hear from the darkness, at three distinct times, in the night-hushed town of which I grew up that always, perfectly catches me unawares. It casts its wail as it cuts through the brim of downtown, and I am in love with it. Its tracks parallel those of the newfangled rail that darts about town, but Its track goes somewhere I have never seen. As a teenager, it haunted me--as all great loves do. I craved, with watery mouth, to follow those tracks; and in following years' visits home, even after circumventing the globe (with a few eclipses of my very self in-between), its yowl can still clutch at something...right There, inside.

It may be said that another, illogical part of me misses the angst of teenage ignorance, as Grown ignorance rises more heavily toward the top, and static settles into the silence.

It is quiet and cold, and I am entranced with the nebulous flag waving, wavering on the other side of the frosted front door amidst the vanguard of my neighbor's light display that likens to a house afire in the current state of affairs. I am cozy, by the glow of Christmas tree, by the blush of spiked cider, by the bevy of animals amongst my covers. And tonight is one of which I am visited by dawdling whiffs of yore and yet to come.

May Your Holiday Season Renew You.