We wish all our partners and federations wonderful Christmas Holidays and a healthy and happy start in the Year 2025.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr! Buon Natale e felice anno nuovo! Crăciun fericit și un an nou fericit! Joyeux Noël et bonne année! Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok! Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!
Bethlehem Light
At Christmas, we hear only carols. He was born, I bring you the newspaper, I want him to sleep, Hear, hear, hear, shepherds… I can do those, but I don’t have a musical ear.
Dad said he had a big surprise for us this year. He was out somewhere freezing, so he filled his bathtub with hot water to thaw out. Mommy went to feed the rabbits.
I come into the kitchen and see they left a candle burning on the table. I immediately thought of what Dad said to me, “Pete, I’m telling you, a candle is an open light and must not burn unattended. That’s what causes most fires.” So I blew out the candle.
When my mother came back from the rabbits and saw that the candle was not burning and the wick was only emitting a smell, she got scared. “Petey! You didn’t blow it out, did you?” she whispered, wide-eyed. “I did,” I said, and I knew at once that I had committed a crime. “Matches, come on, matches!” Mummy reached into the drawer and lit the candle. There was a splash from the bathroom as Dad climbed out of the tub. Mom put the matches back in the drawer and smoothed the tablecloth. And then we heard Dad singing Christmas carols.
“Come here, sit down,” Mommy said in that scared little voice, and I sat down next to her. “Peter, listen well now. You have to promise me you won’t say you blew out that candle, do you understand me? You’d hurt Daddy too much, do you understand me?” “Yes,” I said, but I didn’t understand at all. I just knew I’d done some terrible thing. “The candle was still burning here. You didn’t blow it out!” “I blew it out,” I said quietly. “You didn’t!” Mommy squeezed my hand And by that time, Dad was out of the bathroom.
He was wearing a holiday shirt and a red vest that Mommy had knitted for him, and he smelled all nice. He smiled at us and said: “Come to the table.” So Mommy and I got up, the harp played its song, and we sat down across from Daddy.
Daddy clasped his hands and said: “Listen, Pete, I’ll tell you something. That flame you see in front of you is not just any flame. It’s the light of Bethlehem. In Bethlehem, and you know this well, was born…?” “Jesus,” I said.
“Yes. And in that city of Bethlehem, the same fire burns that we have here on our holiday table. Because the faithful people there lit lamps from that holy fire and flew them, you understand, by airplanes, to Vienna. And in Vienna, our Boy Scouts, Christian boys, were waiting to light their lamp again from that lamp from Bethlehem and bring that burning lamp to us by train. And at every station where the train stopped, other scouts waited with their lamps, and when they had lit them, they passed the fire to the people on the platform, and they carried it to their homes. And I was waiting at our station today with an oil lamp.
There were a lot of us believers there, you wouldn’t believe it. And when we left, we looked like the little bugs in that book I read you. We were like the little bugs with the lanterns, only we didn’t have wings. By the time I got home, the oil in that lamp was almost gone. Imagine if it had run out! But it didn’t, so I still managed to light this candle of ours.”
Dad put his hand over the candle to get warm from the flame that Mom had lit with our matches, and I got a twinge behind my ears, which I always get when I need to tell a truth, so I took a breath and said: “But Dad, that candle…” My mother squeezed my hand under the table and said, “Yes, Petya, not everyone has that candle. Because not everyone has a daddy who would wait in the freezing cold at the station to bring home the light from Bethlehem.”
