Christmas Eve, Holding the Line

Christmas Eve arrives the way it always does out here…without announcement. The chores still come first. The gate still sticks where the thaw refroze it. Breath hangs in the air and settles back into wool and earth. There is a hush to the evening, not silence exactly, but a feeling that the land itself has leaned in to listen.

The flock eats slowly tonight, as if they know this is no ordinary dark. Nothing asks to be hurried. The creek speaks under ice. The hills hold their shape. We do the small faithful things…hay laid just right, water checked twice, a pause before turning back toward the house where light and children wait.

Christmas, like winter, teaches us that care is the real miracle. Not spectacle, not speed, but the steady keeping of what has been entrusted. On a night like this, the work itself feels like prayer…done quietly, in the cold, and enough.