A Christmas List on Fire

1. A rusty glow filters through the leaves of my backyard apple tree onto the worn patio stones. The clock on the stove reads 11am, but the light feels more like the first hints of evening than like midday. High in the sky, the sun is an orange ball on fire shrouded in the smoky carbon of ancient boreal forest. On this June afternoon, for the first time in my memory, the smoke from one of Ontario’s record breaking wildfires reaches our city. I swipe to the air quality tab on my weather app to decide if it’s safe to play outside, and I wonder if these hazy summer skies are a new normal for us. The flaming sunsets. The filthy furnace filters. The reassurance I offer my kids about how the smoke doesn’t mean the fire is a danger for us. The caution I also offer about how the fire’s distance doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s not there. The image I have of a sea of burning Christmas trees. My wish that everything would just stop burning.

2. I find the jumbo matches nestled in between the candles and BBQ lighters in the aisle next to the frozen pizza. I slide one box, and then another, off the top shelf and carry them to the checkout. At home, the matches join three nondescript white pillar candles on the kitchen island. In the afternoons that follow, huddled outside in a down-filled blanket, I indulge my daughters’ wish to add real candles to their rustic brick ovens. They watch the flames, warm their fingers, poke the melted wax at the bottom with tiny sticks, pour it out into little puddles on a pile of bricks when I’m not looking, and experiment with how close they can get to the flames without being burned. On a non-flammable surface and with a bucket of water nearby, these tiny flames are unthreatening compared to the forest fires that plagued our summer. But, on these dark mid-December afternoons, there is a promise of light in these candles that illuminate the faces of my daughters who huddle on the muddy patio stones, holding vigil around their unintentional advent wreath.

3. Tonight, the earth makes its annual trek through the debris field of a sun-orbiting asteroid. We’re a few days away from the longest night of the year and at the peak of the Geminids meteor shower. These asteroid pebbles are on a collision course with the earth, and we’re here for the light show. We pile on the layers for the short walk to the half frozen field in our neighbourhood park. The city’s lights blur the stars near the horizon, but if we look up we can see a few familiar constellations. Orion. Cassiopeia. The Pleiades. Gemini. Tonight’s meteors radiate from this point in the eastern sky. We scan for explosions and for those bright, shimmering tails. Although we only see a handful, we are not disappointed. It occurs to me to be grateful that the fire isn’t raining down on us.

4. In the week before Christmas, I scroll past advent wreaths, turkey tips, and solstice sunsets before my gaze rests on an image of a baby Jesus figurine in a church in Bethlehem. Surrounded by rubble and illuminated by a single candle, this church has arranged an unlikely nativity scene. I’ve never seen one like this before, but perhaps this is what Christmas looks like in a war zone. I start to wonder: how should Christmas look on this side of the world when it’s cancelled in Bethlehem? When the world is on fire? When the glow around the face of baby Jesus also spotlights the rubble?

5. Two thousand years ago, a stable in the West Bank was illuminated from above by a burning ball of plasma and from within by the light of the world. Shepherd’s took notice. Kings took notice. Astrologers took notice. It’s hard to ignore fire.