Here's my Christmas contribution... from Canadian artist & storyteller, William Kurelek... in A Northern Nativity.
William saw himself in his dream as Bill, the young man he wanted to be when he was old enough to do as he pleased. But this Bill is bent over and dejected like an old man. It is the wrong time to be young, ambitious and full of hope. Beyond the railway tracks in this big city on the Prairies stand sheds and silos, many of them dark and closed. Bill is one of the unemployed swarming out of boxcars, begging lodging and food, looking cold and discouraged. 'Someday,' his teacher had said while explaining the Depression to William's class, 'you may taste despair -- and then you will know how much kindness can mean.'
Bill knocks at several houses along the tracks to try to get shelter. At the last door the lady who turns him away mutters, 'Lazy bums!' He crosses the tracks to try on the other side, boiling with anger: 'I am not lazy. Ukrainians have always worked hard.' And then he remembers! Tonight is January 6, the Ukrainian Christmas Eve. This is Bill's first Christmas away from home, family and the Holy Feast of twelve dishes. He feels as low as he ever imagined possible.
Just then he hears singing, and it is in Ukrainian! Boh Predvichney -- God Eternal -- was a carol sung by children going from house to house in the old country. But these are strong men's voices, coming from another line of boxcars. He loses no time scrambling over and introducing himself. It is a section foreman and his gang in a work car. "Proshoo, Vitayemo, spend the night in one of our bunks." The offer is made and gladly accepted.
As Bill settles in he wonders if he should tell them something he has just seen. At the very moment he heard them singing he was passing an open boxcar. A lantern had suddenly lit up the inside and he saw Mary wrapping the Child in a blanket on some packing straw while Joseph looked on protectively. Bill hadn't stopped though. Somehow he felt the vision was a sign to gon on to the kindness he was to receive from these working men. And it was more: it was a happiness to treasure in his heart during these hard times.
Yet perhaps the working men would have believed -- for they had shared with him the traditional Christmas fare from their lunch boxes.
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