The Advent...

[Starting tomorrow, 11/27, I will publish one story from the book each day of Advent until Christmas Eve. Please spread the word. -Craig]

-Advent is a season observed in many Western Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. The term is a version of the Latin word meaning "coming".

Latin adventus is the translation of the Greek word parousia, commonly used to refer to the Second Coming of Christ. For Christians, the season of Advent anticipates the coming of Christ from three different perspectives. "Since the time of Bernard of Clairvaux (d.1153) Christians have spoken of the three comings of Christ: in the flesh in Bethlehem, in our hearts daily, and in glory at the end of time." The season offers the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the coming of the Messiah, and to be alert for his Second Coming. - 

Tomorrow begins Advent.

Seven years ago, right about this time of year, I was having some discussions with my daughter about Christmas and Advent. It was the first year that she no longer believed in Santa Claus. At least not in a physical visit from the old elf. And as it turned out, it was the last year we would do an Advent calendar together.

I used to buy two identical Advent calendars for her. She kept one at my house and one at her mom’s. When she was with me she would open a door each night and we would talk about what lay behind it. When she was at her mom’s. she would do the same, but while on the phone with me. It was one of my favorite traditions and it dated back to my own childhood. I was not raised Catholic or Orthodox, but we had a cardboard Advent Calendar each year. They were magical. Each day drew me one day closer to Christmas. As a child, I didn’t understand the significance of the calendar, or of Advent, but I loved the excitement. I wanted to keep this tradition alive with my own daughter and I managed to do so for ten years.

But Christmas 2009 was different.

I had been homeless for over a year by that point. The previous year was not my year to have her for the holiday anyway so it never became a problem. But 2009 was my turn, and I had nowhere to go. We usually go home to the Philadelphia area for Christmas, but the weeks leading up were always festive at my house and this year that would not be the case. I was homeless. We could not decorate my house. There was nowhere to hang the Advent calendar. And I needed that Advent more that year than ever before.

Adventus.

It means “coming.”

Jesus. The Messiah, He was coming.

The ancient world ached for His arrival. The people of Israel had been hounded and scattered and oppressed for centuries. They were under the Roman thumb as they watched and waited for their Deliverer. When He came, they didn’t recognize Him. He was illegitimate. He was poor. He was from the wrong side of the tracks. His life was greeted with whispers and scandal and outrage. He would spend his days lonely, misunderstood, attacked, beloved, betrayed, and finally murdered. His story would be altogether tragic had it not been for the Resurrection.

But none of that was known in those days leading up to His arrival in Bethlehem. Nobody knew what the future held for this little baby, born in a cave where sheep had been bedding down only hours before. This little boy whose mother claimed she was still a virgin, and that the child’s father was God Himself. This teenaged girl and her loving husband who must have been in turmoil inside. How could he not be? He wasn’t sure about Mary’s story about God being this baby’s father but he knew one thing…he was not. Yet he loved her and so he stayed married to her and decided to be obedient to the angel that bore the message from God, and raise this child as his own.

The world was convulsing and wrestling that night. The Romans had taken control of the region. They were in league with local rulers who cut deals for their own power and advancement. The People of Israel were weary. Mary was almost ready to have this baby. Joseph was poor. The houses were all full. There was only a cave.

Adventus.

He is coming…

He is coming. He is making His way here, to take on flesh and walk among us for thirty-three years. To feel what we feel. To sweat, to weep, to laugh, to teach. To heal and to make whole. Those are two different things. You can heal a wound or an illness. You can make someone whole who isn’t broken on the outside, but on the inside. And He was coming to save us. To save us from the sin that condemned us.

He came to die.

This was God. God in the flesh. Not just any flesh…baby flesh. Tiny, helpless, approachable, unassuming. Had you or I been there that night, and had we somehow wandered into that cave, we might have looked at the teenaged mom and asked, “Mary…could I hold Him?” What if she said “yes?” What if she placed that little form in your arms and you went breathless as he moved gently, and slept as you held Him? What if the whole history of man was laying there wrapped in those rags that night, and you were holding Him? What if you knew the outcome and destiny of His life on the very night it began? Would that change you? Would you be different? Would you view God differently if you could have held Him in your arms when he was a baby?

I think the answer is yes.

Seven years ago, when I was a broken man, homeless, hopeless, bewildered, and under the cruel thumb of an economy that would not relent, I needed an Advent. I needed to anticipate His coming. I needed to be there on that night…the night where history breaks in two as cleanly as a saltine cracker.

Before Him and After Him.

I wrote the first story on November 28, 2009. I wrote one each day thereafter for the entire Advent season that year. They came in spurts. One each day. Each one came so fast I could barely write them down sometimes. Each one oved me deeply and made me think about Jesus at Christmas in ways I never had before.

These stories became a book, “The Ragamuffin’s Christmas.” This year, in a world that needs these stories more than ever, I have decided to publish them again, the way I did that first year. Free on the internet. One each day on my blog. I hope there will be folks out there who need these stories. I hope they find them.

He is coming. He approaches us once again. The Nativity set has been taken from storage, the trees are going up, the music announces His birth. He is, once again…everywhere.

This has been a hard year for me and my daughter, much as it was that first year when these stories were new. I know I need an Advent this year. I hope that, while I am on this journey yet again this season, there will be others who join me. I hope that, come Christmas morning, as I kneel in the manger of my heart, I find myself surrounded by other travelers at this stable. Others who, like me, have been shipwrecked here and found ourselves revived by the cry of a tiny babe.

Comfort From the Salvation Army Bells...some thoughts on Christmas

I went to Walmart tonight to pick up some trivial trinket or other. On the way in, there were three people braving the cold drizzle to ring the bell at a Salvation Army Kettle. I instantly recalled the line in Rich Mullin's "Hold Me Jesus" "...and the Salvation Army band is playing this hymn. And your grace rings out so deep, it makes my resistance seem so thin..."

That first Ragamuffins Album is smattered with snippets of Americana. I know the Salvation Army is an international ministry organization, but something about a bell ringer and a kettle feels purely American.

I got teary eyed...as I often do when I recall Rich and especially that record, and especially that song. I've been locked in a real wrestling match for months now and the line "Your Grace rings out so deep...it makes my resistance seem so thin" grabbed hold of me. I've been at this crossroads for a while, and no clarity seems to be in sight. But I know I can count on His Grace...even though my humanity resists it, for lack of grasping it. There was comfort in the bell ringer at the kettle. Comfort in knowing that 2014 years have come and gone since that scandalous, wild, illogical, mystical night in Bethlehem and -try as it might- this world simply cannot remove the impact of that night on humanity. It can try to remove it from the vernacular, but it can never remove it from our hearts. As Brennan Manning said "Behind every Christmas ornament and every sprig of mistletoe. Behind every twinkling light and every antiseptic "Happy Holidays, there is the truth of this Baby." Christmas seems to annually take my heart on an excursion back to a place I long for and can never return to. The only thing that remains unchanged throughout the years...the star still leads us to the Baby. And deny it as some voices may...the whole world knows this to be true. The star still leads to the Baby. Come as you are...

...I guess I heard all that in those simple bells this evening.

Christmas Letter to my Daughter...

Your first Christmas, you were only six months old.

Being a dad for the first time was the only present I needed.

You had no idea what was going on, but your mom and I did.

Every smile. Every laugh. Every single second was a Christmas present from God to me.

By your second Christmas, we weren’t a family anymore. You were still too young to realize what was going on in your world, but I knew. I knew you’d never have a Christmas again the way it was on your first one. Never again with both your mom and me together with you. I swore I’d never introduce the word “divorce” into your world. I can’t remember being more sad at Christmas than I was that year.

But I had you… and that made it Christmas.

The years flew by. On the Christmases you were with me it was joyous. We went home every year. Remember the first time I took you to Wannamaker’s in Philly and showed you the lights? The very same lights I went to see when I was just a little boy. We have always been great connoisseurs of Christmas lights, you and I, and with technology being what it is; you weren’t as impressed with the Wannamaker light display as I was as a child. But you smiled and we took pictures and made a day of it. I wished the monorail was still there. And the big toy department.  You were always so happy. Always so caught up in Christmas, like I was when I was that age. To be honest, you helped me survive those Christmases.

All I ever wanted for my whole life was to create the family I didn’t have. The home I never knew. I wanted you to wake up every single day of your life, knowing…almost taking for granted…that your daddy loved you, that your parents loved each other and that home was a safe haven. Not the place you wished you could get away from. I couldn’t give you that. That wasn’t my choice but I had to live with it just like you did.

You made it possible. You and Christmas.

You got older. Finding the perfect gifts got a little harder each year. You weren’t satisfied with just “Dollies and Dishes.” You loved music. Loved it. I don’t remember a time when you weren’t singing. Making up little songs in a voice that had no business coming from a four-year old. You were born with that gift. It showed up almost as soon as you could talk. Christmas gifts always included something musical. You still believed in Santa, and I still climbed up on the roof on Christmas Eve and shook sleigh bells and stomped around and “Ho Ho Ho’d” and called out to invisible reindeer as you shut your eyes tight and listened as Santa delivered his packages. I lived for those Christmas Eve, rooftop adventures. I loved being your daddy.

Just as you were turning ten, my world collapsed again. I was just getting back to normal. Just feeling like a whole man again after years of heartbreak from being divorced and missing you so much when we weren’t together. Then my world spun the wrong direction again and everything was gone. No job. No success. And not long after…no home. Our beautiful little ranch house in the country was gone. And with it, our garden, our dogs and our cat and your beloved pony “Silly Willy.” Gone. You were ten. I’d spent ten years very carefully trying to never fail you or let you down. But I couldn’t stop it this time. It was out of my control, and when you’re a dad, you are supposed to be able to fix everything. I always could. I used to make little repairs around the house and you would be so amazed at what your daddy could do with his hands and some tools. But this time, I had no answers. This time I was helpless.

That was the Christmas that you stopped believing in Santa. Your cousins had told you about him, and you told me late that fall. We stopped doing the Advent Calendars too. And there was no longer any need for the sleigh bells, or the ladder to the roof.

But it was still Christmas. We still had Uncle Franny and Cousin Toni and Sissy and Nick and Feast of Seven Fishes. And I still had you.

This year will be the first Christmas in about five years that we won’t spend together. You’re with your mom…and I understand that. I love having you living with me now, and life is beginning to rebuild. But I miss Christmas.

I miss you being little, and I miss being your hero and your favorite person. I miss making you laugh with my Winnie the Pooh impersonations. We won’t be watching Christmas movies this year. Or listening to our traditional Christmas music. Or decorating our house.

Our house.

I miss our house. I miss Christmas. I miss my little girl.

Next Christmas will be the last one before you go off to college. It will be like all the others you have ever known, except that first one. It will once again be spent away from one of your parents. I’m still sorry about that. It still hurts. I would have endured for your sake. I would have chosen to give you your family, if the choice had been mine.

I don’t know what future Christmases will look like, or where you’ll be. One day, some young man will come and win your heart. And you’ll begin your own Christmas traditions. I hope you’ll have better success at it than I did. I think I’ve been a pretty good dad. I think I did Christmas pretty well, given the circumstances. I wish I could have a few more of them with you. Like when you were little. Like the time we drove to the beach on Christmas Eve day and saw deer feeding by the side of the woods, and you turned to me and said; “Look Daddy! It’s Santa’s reindeer getting ready for tonight!” And you were pretty sure you saw Rudolph’s nose blinking. And for a minute I felt like the best dad in the world.

I miss you at Christmas. I love you more than ever, even as you’ve become a wonderful, beautiful young woman. But I remember that first Christmas. And how much promise it held. You are still the greatest gift I ever got. And you always will be.

Merry Christmas, Morgan. My beautiful Daisy. You have always meant Christmas to me.

I love you.

Daddy 

Short Form Video trailer for The Ragamuffin's Christmas

How do you write a book like this?

I’ve been asked that more than a couple of times since 2011 when I first bundled those 24 short stories I had written the year prior and made them into a book. “How do you imagine yourself in the Nativity, holding Jesus?” The answer is…”It’s a mystery.” I don’t know. The train of thought went like this.

I was homeless. I had lost my job in March of 2008 when the mortgage company I worked for pulled up stakes and closed down its Tennessee offices. I had my own branch of the largest privately-funded mortgage company in the world, and I had done nicely for myself.  I was nationally recognized as a leader in my business, a leader in my community, and manager of a model office for production, compliance, and customer service. After 5 years in the business, I had finally earned the right to have an office with these folks, (Allied Home Mortgage was the jewel of the industry back then. You had to be very good at your job just to be considered for a branch) I had mastered the business, and I was rebuilding my life after a crushing divorce in 1999.

All I really ever wanted was to be a husband and a father. I became a husband in February 1997. I became a dad in May, 1998.  In December 1999 I became a divorcee.  To say my heart was broken would be to say the Titanic was a “boating incident.” I was devastated. I lived for my family. I pushed myself to become the best at my job so that they’d be proud of me. Before I had ever really tasted the fruits of the early success I had, they were gone. I had no wife and I had part-time fatherhood. For me it was like losing a limb. You don’t turn off your fatherhood and then turn it back on again, once a week and every other weekend.  The pain became part of who I was. I learned to succeed in business, despite the loss of the single motivating factor behind that success. I became a zombie.

But there was always Christmas.

I am a Christmas guy. I am Clark Griswold in “Christmas Vacation.” I would have enough lights on my house to divert aircraft and have them land in my front yard.  My daughter was 18 months old when her mom and I divorced.  From the first Christmas until Christmas 2010, I had traditions that she and I kept. We always watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (and I always cry when Linus says “Lights please” and begins to quote the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke) we watch “A Christmas Carol” (The 1951 version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge) and we baked Italian Christmas cookies, like ricotta cheese, strawberry thumbprints, and, of course, Pizzelles. (Italian waffle cookies that taste like licorice)

The other tradition we had, was that every Christmas Eve, just as she was falling to sleep, I would sneak up on the roof of our house and stomp around, jingling sleigh bells and bellowing “Ho Ho Ho! I would call out to imaginary reindeer and do my best to make my voice sound like I was fading into the distance as I drove my sleigh off into the night.

I took Morgan home every Christmas season to experience the Christmas Season as I did in my native Philadelphia. We went to the old Wannamaker store and saw the antiquated light show in the grand terrace. We put some money in the Salvation Army kettle and listened as the band played their Christmas hymns. I told her about my grandmother – her namesake- and how she loved Christmas, We went to Uncle Franny’s house for “Feast of Seven Fishes” each Christmas Eve.

Maybe the most special tradition we kept every Christmas was the Advent Calendar.

I had one every year as a kid, and when she was old enough, I got two identical Advent calendars and she would keep one at my house and one at her mom’s. Each night, if she was at her mom’s house, I would get her on the phone and we would open the door for that day and discuss the scene behind it. If she was at my house we opened it together. The Advent Calendar had a place of prominence on the kitchen counter, alongside whatever recent drawing she had made me.

This worked well for ten Christmases.

In 2008 I had lost my job, then my career, as the industry imploded upon itself. By May, I was homeless. I slept in my car, tucked behind a church in Nashville until November when I got hired as a sales rep for a heating and air conditioning company. I managed to get an apartment and that first Christmas I wasn’t actually homeless.

But the economy kept getting worse and by February, the company folded. By May, 2009 I was homeless again. This time…I had the feeling it would be long term. The economy wasn’t getting better; I was 46 and had two years of a bachelor’s degree under my belt. I had been a great success, but in an industry that had all but vanished. I was lost.

I spent that year trying to put out resume after resume and finding that my age, recent work experience, and lack of an address, conspired against me. By August I decided to enroll in college to complete my degree, hoping that would turn the tide and at least make my resume look better. By November, I had been sleeping in my car again for six months, doing classwork online at local restaurants, showering at the County Rec center, and –in my quiet moments- wondering if I would ever-again feel whole.

In the middle of this was my now-ten-year-old daughter. I was able to conceal my homelessness from her for about six months, but that fall of 2009, she figured it out. She worried about me. She cried. I cried even more. I recall one day driving along with my friend Creig Soeder, and the dam burst. He’d asked me how she was doing and I said she was okay. Then the thought hit me…”What if one of her friends find out I’m homeless and they tease her because of it?” I said this to Creig as my heart shattered all over again and I sobbed in his truck for a very long five minutes.

By November, I was planning on traveling home to Philadelphia for the Holidays again. Morgan and I were talking at McDonalds. We could no longer have every other weekend together. She lived with her mom full time now and I would spend Saturdays with her, but I had not been able to hear her bedtime prayers, or tuck her in for almost two years now. Our home in the country was gone. Our beloved pets were gone. It was all gone except for memories. I asked her one night about going home. “What do you want Santa to bring?” I asked. She grew quiet and said “Daddy…I know about Santa now.” I was devastated. I was hoping for one more Christmas like we’d had before this nightmare began.  I just wanted my little girl to remain my little girl.

I needed Christmas.

So I asked her about the Advent Calendar. She lowered her eyes. I knew already. She didn’t want to do those this year either.

She struggled to tell me so I just said it for her. I wasn’t trying to make this hard for her. “I guess so” she said…”But not really.” Was her response when I asked her if she wanted to do the Advent Calendars again.  A few years later, she would tell me this was because we no longer had a kitchen counter to place it on. She was trying to spare me the embarrassment. But that night, she was just growing up too soon at the very time I needed her to remain little for just a while longer.

I remember driving her to her moms’ that evening and kissing her on the forehead and saying goodnight. I cried the rest of the way back to Franklin. I can’t say “the rest of the way home,” because I didn’t have one. I probably went to the local Panera and did some school work. But inside I was dying.

The Advent Calendar was the end.  I had lost everything that identified me professionally. I’d lost my little country house and my garden and my two beautiful Springer Spaniels and my cat. I lost the house that felt like a home every other weekend when my daughter was there with me.

Now…I was losing Christmas too.

The Advent calendar was the final blow. I remember walking to my car. At the time I was driving a 1995 Volvo 850. That’s what I slept in every night, bundled against the winter cold in two sleeping bags. I drove to Oak Hill Assembly of God in Nashville, and nudged my car into the high weeds behind the sanctuary. I thought about all that had happened. I thought about my home. My career. I thought about my daughter and that Advent Calendar.  I remembered the night my daughter was born. How holding her changed everything that was, or would ever be. Now she was ten years old. Already gone was her innocent belief in Santa. I needed her to be little for just a while longer. I needed her to open those Advent Calendar doors one more time.  Then it hit me…

I needed an Advent.

I was lying in the passenger seat of that Volvo, and I started thinking about how that night in May changed everything. Holding my baby changed my life. I started to think about Brennan Manning’s book, “Relentless Tenderness” and I thought about Jesus coming as a baby. He came as a scandalous, illegitimate, poor, unnoticed baby born to a carpenter and his teen aged wife. I wondered what emotions might have gone through Mary and Joseph’s heart as they held him. Were they emotions like mine were when Morgan was born?

Then it hit me. What if I had been there? What if I had held him when he was just a few minutes old?

I fell asleep that night with the image of Jesus in my arms. An image that would not leave my soul.

The next day, I wrote an article on my blog about what I had been thinking the night before. The day after that I wrote one story about Santa Claus coming to the manger and kneeling next to Jesus and worshiping him. The next day I think it was Joseph, and my image of what thoughts might have been running through his troubled soul as he held God in the flesh and called him “son.”

After a week, the stories became more special. More inspired. I wound up writing one story per day for the entire Advent season in 2009. That was the genesis of “The Ragamuffin’s Christmas.” Characters presented themselves at the manger in Bethlehem. A murderer and his victims. The Roman soldier who watched Jesus die on the cross. The inn keeper who had no room. My grandfather.  Mother Teresa. Every story opened a floodgate of emotions and drew me to the tiny baby of Bethlehem.

There is healing here. There is an amazing, mystical encounter with Jesus as it might have been.

There is innocence, and the unassuming, disarming presence of a baby.

…who just happens to be God in the flesh.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ragamuffins-Christmas-Craig-Daliessio/dp/0984533672

How do you write a book like this?

How do you write a book like this?

I’ve been asked that more than a couple of times since 2011 when I first bundled those 24 short stories I had written the year prior and made them into a book. “How do you imagine yourself in the Nativity, holding Jesus?” The answer is…”It’s a mystery.” I don’t know. The train of thought went like this.

I was homeless. I had lost my job in March of 2008 when the mortgage company I worked for pulled up stakes and closed down its Tennessee offices. I had my own branch of the largest privately-funded mortgage company in the world, and I had done nicely for myself.  I was nationally recognized as a leader in my business, a leader in my community, and manager of a model office for production, compliance, and customer service. After 5 years in the business, I had finally earned the right to have an office with these folks, (Allied Home Mortgage was the jewel of the industry back then. You had to be very good at your job just to be considered for a branch) I had mastered the business, and I was rebuilding my life after a crushing divorce in 1999.

All I really ever wanted was to be a husband and a father. I became a husband in February 1997. I became a dad in May, 1998.  In December 1999 I became a divorcee.  To say my heart was broken would be to say the Titanic was a “boating incident.” I was devastated. I lived for my family. I pushed myself to become the best at my job so that they’d be proud of me. Before I had ever really tasted the fruits of the early success I had, they were gone. I had no wife and I had part-time fatherhood. For me it was like losing a limb. You don’t turn off your fatherhood and then turn it back on again, once a week and every other weekend.  The pain became part of who I was. I learned to succeed in business, despite the loss of the single motivating factor behind that success. I became a zombie.

But there was always Christmas.

I am a Christmas guy. I am Clark Griswold in “Christmas Vacation.” I would have enough lights on my house to divert aircraft and have them land in my front yard.  My daughter was 18 months old when her mom and I divorced.  From the first Christmas until Christmas 2010, I had traditions that she and I kept. We always watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (and I always cry when Linus says “Lights please” and begins to quote the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke) we watch “A Christmas Carol” (The 1951 version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge) and we baked Italian Christmas cookies, like ricotta cheese, strawberry thumbprints, and, of course, Pizzelles. (Italian waffle cookies that taste like licorice)

The other tradition we had, was that every Christmas Eve, just as she was falling to sleep, I would sneak up on the roof of our house and stomp around, jingling sleigh bells and bellowing “Ho Ho Ho! I would call out to imaginary reindeer and do my best to make my voice sound like I was fading into the distance as I drove my sleigh off into the night.

I took Morgan home every Christmas season to experience the Christmas Season as I did in my native Philadelphia. We went to the old Wannamaker store and saw the antiquated light show in the grand terrace. We put some money in the Salvation Army kettle and listened as the band played their Christmas hymns. I told her about my grandmother – her namesake- and how she loved Christmas, We went to Uncle Franny’s house for “Feast of Seven Fishes” each Christmas Eve.

Maybe the most special tradition we kept every Christmas was the Advent Calendar.

I had one every year as a kid, and when she was old enough, I got two identical Advent calendars and she would keep one at my house and one at her mom’s. Each night, if she was at her mom’s house, I would get her on the phone and we would open the door for that day and discuss the scene behind it. If she was at my house we opened it together. The Advent Calendar had a place of prominence on the kitchen counter, alongside whatever recent drawing she had made me.

This worked well for ten Christmases.

In 2008 I had lost my job, then my career, as the industry imploded upon itself. By May, I was homeless. I slept in my car, tucked behind a church in Nashville until November when I got hired as a sales rep for a heating and air conditioning company. I managed to get an apartment and that first Christmas I wasn’t actually homeless.

But the economy kept getting worse and by February, the company folded. By May, 2009 I was homeless again. This time…I had the feeling it would be long term. The economy wasn’t getting better; I was 46 and had two years of a bachelor’s degree under my belt. I had been a great success, but in an industry that had all but vanished. I was lost.

I spent that year trying to put out resume after resume and finding that my age, recent work experience, and lack of an address, conspired against me. By August I decided to enroll in college to complete my degree, hoping that would turn the tide and at least make my resume look better. By November, I had been sleeping in my car again for six months, doing classwork online at local restaurants, showering at the County Rec center, and –in my quiet moments- wondering if I would ever-again feel whole.

In the middle of this was my now-ten-year-old daughter. I was able to conceal my homelessness from her for about six months, but that fall of 2009, she figured it out. She worried about me. She cried. I cried even more. I recall one day driving along with my friend Creig Soeder, and the dam burst. He’d asked me how she was doing and I said she was okay. Then the thought hit me…”What if one of her friends find out I’m homeless and they tease her because of it?” I said this to Creig as my heart shattered all over again and I sobbed in his truck for a very long five minutes.

By November, I was planning on traveling home to Philadelphia for the Holidays again. Morgan and I were talking at McDonalds. We could no longer have every other weekend together. She lived with her mom full time now and I would spend Saturdays with her, but I had not been able to hear her bedtime prayers, or tuck her in for almost two years now. Our home in the country was gone. Our beloved pets were gone. It was all gone except for memories. I asked her one night about going home. “What do you want Santa to bring?” I asked. She grew quiet and said “Daddy…I know about Santa now.” I was devastated. I was hoping for one more Christmas like we’d had before this nightmare began.  I just wanted my little girl to remain my little girl.

I needed Christmas.

So I asked her about the Advent Calendar. She lowered her eyes. I knew already. She didn’t want to do those this year either.

She struggled to tell me so I just said it for her. I wasn’t trying to make this hard for her. “I guess so” she said…”But not really.” Was her response when I asked her if she wanted to do the Advent Calendars again.  A few years later, she would tell me this was because we no longer had a kitchen counter to place it on. She was trying to spare me the embarrassment. But that night, she was just growing up too soon at the very time I needed her to remain little for just a while longer.

I remember driving her to her moms’ that evening and kissing her on the forehead and saying goodnight. I cried the rest of the way back to Franklin. I can’t say “the rest of the way home,” because I didn’t have one. I probably went to the local Panera and did some school work. But inside I was dying.

The Advent Calendar was the end.  I had lost everything that identified me professionally. I’d lost my little country house and my garden and my two beautiful Springer Spaniels and my cat. I lost the house that felt like a home every other weekend when my daughter was there with me.

Now…I was losing Christmas too.

The Advent calendar was the final blow. I remember walking to my car. At the time I was driving a 1995 Volvo 850. That’s what I slept in every night, bundled against the winter cold in two sleeping bags. I drove to Oak Hill Assembly of God in Nashville, and nudged my car into the high weeds behind the sanctuary. I thought about all that had happened. I thought about my home. My career. I thought about my daughter and that Advent Calendar.  I remembered the night my daughter was born. How holding her changed everything that was, or would ever be. Now she was ten years old. Already gone was her innocent belief in Santa. I needed her to be little for just a while longer. I needed her to open those Advent Calendar doors one more time.  Then it hit me…

I needed an Advent.

I was lying in the passenger seat of that Volvo, and I started thinking about how that night in May changed everything. Holding my baby changed my life. I started to think about Brennan Manning’s book, “Relentless Tenderness” and I thought about Jesus coming as a baby. He came as a scandalous, illegitimate, poor, unnoticed baby born to a carpenter and his teen aged wife. I wondered what emotions might have gone through Mary and Joseph’s heart as they held him. Were they emotions like mine were when Morgan was born?

Then it hit me. What if I had been there? What if I had held him when he was just a few minutes old?

I fell asleep that night with the image of Jesus in my arms. An image that would not leave my soul.

The next day, I wrote an article on my blog about what I had been thinking the night before. The day after that I wrote one story about Santa Claus coming to the manger and kneeling next to Jesus and worshiping him. The next day I think it was Joseph, and my image of what thoughts might have been running through his troubled soul as he held God in the flesh and called him “son.”

After a week, the stories became more special. More inspired. I wound up writing one story per day for the entire Advent season in 2009. That was the genesis of “The Ragamuffin’s Christmas.” Characters presented themselves at the manger in Bethlehem. A murderer and his victims. The Roman soldier who watched Jesus die on the cross. The inn keeper who had no room. My grandfather.  Mother Teresa. Every story opened a floodgate of emotions and drew me to the tiny baby of Bethlehem.

There is healing here. There is an amazing, mystical encounter with Jesus as it might have been.

There is innocence, and the unassuming, disarming presence of a baby.

…who just happens to be God in the flesh.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ragamuffins-Christmas-Craig-Daliessio/dp/0984533672

New Interview with Craig

This morning on Tennessee Mornings on Fox 17 here in Nashville

Tennessee Morning Interview

Special Presentation..."Shipwrecks at the Stable...Stories from A Ragamuffin Christmas"

Hey everyone...
I did a live broadcast tonight for the book. It was a one-hour special entitled "Shipwrecks at the Stable...Stories from A Ragamuffin Christmas" and it's the story behind the stories that make up A Ragamuffin Christmas. Click the link and give it a listen!
Shipwrecks at the Stable...Stories from A Ragamuffin Christmas"