It’s a moment. The exact stroke of midnight, as Christmas Eve moves to Christmas Day. It’s the movement from dancing and drinking, presents and tree lights, to the minister’s victorious pronouncement that Christ the King has been born. It always seems as if everything changes at that one moment. I know it’s a spectacular illusion, but I believe it every year.

“Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.
The nights are wholesome. Then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.”

- Marcellus, Hamlet

On that annual midnight, that hallowed and gracious time, there seem to me to be just the right conditions set for the abstraction of mind needed to walk in the presence of the new time given to us by God, the new Adam, the new covenant; it all floods in and fills me with hope and love. I look forward to that moment every Christmas Eve. And it’s just a moment, a very soulful moment filled with the love of angels for their newborn God across centuries of human time.

Colleen Ballance

About the Contributor

Colleen has been a Presbyterian her entire life. She joined First Presbyterian in 2005, is currently a second-term elder, Sunday school teacher, and music committee member. She teaches Theater Design at Wofford College.