I used to measure my Christmas seasons by how much I could “get the Christmas spirit,” that is, feel the joy of Christmas.  I would feel cheated and mildly anxious if that “Christmas spirit” and “Christmas happiness” didn’t show up on time and in the appropriate quantities.

I have learned better, by now.  I have learned that joy is a wild bird that may come and sit on my shoulder if I pay no attention to it; but the minute I drop my heavy-handed gaze upon it, trying to attract or contain it, it flies instantly away.

I was thinking about joy yesterday, when I spent the day babysitting Aria Mae, my six-month-old grand-daughter.

“Why,” I asked myself, “Why is it that just being in the presence of a baby brings such joy?”

After all, babies can’t do a single thing to pay back all the time and effort we shower on them. They can’t even change their own diapers.  What is it, then, about a baby that is such a source of constant joy?

Maybe it’s because babies demand our complete attention, taking us away from our day-to-day worries and our absorption with the news and all that is dreariest in our world.

Maybe it’s because babies connect us with the wonder and marvel of the human body. How, with daily striving and lots of practice, our brains can teach our hands to reach out and grab something; can teach our bodies to roll over, to wriggle around and, ultimately, to teeter up on all fours and travel triumphantly (if jerkily) across the room.

Or that we experience through a baby, as if for the first time, the wonders of sight and sound.  Of how cool it is to be able to move one’s fingernails on the leather sofa and make a scratchy noise.  Or how engrossing it can be to stare at one’s reflection in the mirror.

Maybe it’s because babies live so completely in the moment.

Or that their complete innocence gives us a picture of what the world could be.

Maybe it’s because as we teach babies the best of what it is to be human we remind ourselves of how good it is, simply to smile, to laugh, to hug. To play. To fall asleep in peaceful trust.  (Which are all different ways of saying, to love and be loved.)

But finally, I think, babies give us such joy because they connect us, infallibly, with an ancient spiritual truth.  Babies require us to give, endlessly, completely, and without any thought of reward. In such giving, we are blessed. When we give like that, we become aligned, in a small way, with the endless fountain of joy and unconditional love that is God.  And then we cannot help but feel joy, because just to be near that fountain of joy and love is to have that exuberance of joy spill over into ourselves and our lives.

And so, this Christmas, I wish you (whether you are tending a baby or not) a complete break from this world, in something you find absorbing. I wish you a refreshing glimpse of what working marvels our human bodies are. I wish you a renewed joy in sight and sound. I wish you a few moments of innocent contemplation of what our world could be. 

I wish you the best of what it means to be human:  to smile, to laugh, to hug. To play. To fall asleep in peaceful trust.

And, finally, I wish you the gift of giving to someone who cannot possibly pay you back in any way.

I will be seeking these things myself, this holiday season… and I am quite certain that, if we do these things, that wild bird of joy will come, if only for a few blessed moments, to perch upon our shoulders.

Christmas blessings to all of you,

Luann Tennant Coyne