St Nicholas Day 2014
A small kindness on a dark December morning, in a year that had been long. The children got their gifts under the pillow, as they always do.
Happy St Nicholas Day.
It had been a long year by any measure, and I will not add to what has been written about it. What I want to record about this particular nineteenth of December is smaller than that.
The gifts still went under the pillows. In households where the year had taken a great deal, parents still arranged for a child to wake up and find something there. Volunteers organised deliveries for children who had been displaced and were spending the winter somewhere unfamiliar.
There is an argument that these small observances matter most exactly when everything else is difficult, because they tell a child that the shape of the year is intact even when a great deal else is not.
To every household with a child waking early tomorrow: a good day.
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