Happy Boxing Day. It’s become a family tradition in recent years to go have lunch together at the Brew Works in downtown Bethlehem and then walk up and down Main Street and pop into shops like Donegal Square and the Moravian Book Shop. That’s where the beeswax angel came from on my tree. The cloying smell of beeswax always brings me back to the Moravian history units we did in elementary school, field trip days to the historic buildings along the Monocacy Creek where we watched actors in colonial garb work in the tannery and the waterworks, and roped off quarters under the Hill-to-Hill bridge. In 2003 they reconstructed the smithy, and you can watch them work metal in there now on the first floor. On the second floor you can buy things like kits to make the paper Moravian stars we had on our tree as kids. I’ll be trying my hand at one in the coming days.
The mash-up of Moravian and Lutheran traditions permeates my childhood, and it was with some dismay that I visited home this year to discover we are one of the few houses in the neighborhood with electric candles in the windows. Each year on the first Sunday of Advent, Jean Jackson across the street had her candles in the windows and Moravian star hanging from the light fixture on their side porch, which, being on a corner lot, faced our house. The Jacksons no longer live there, and the house is mostly dark, as are many of the houses where younger couples have moved in. And the few older couples still around, who have yet to sell, are now spending Christmas in warmer climates. But not my parents. It isn’t Christmas if they’re not celebrating here in Bethlehem, PA. I guess it’s the same for me. Except for that year in California, I’ve celebrated 34 Christmases here. I know the day will one day come, when my parents are no longer around and I have no family here to return to for the holiday, but for now this is where I want to be this time of year.
