Christmas Letter 2024

December 16, 2024.

Merry Christmas, my friends and family. I write this while sitting by the fire on a gloomy December day just as the sun is setting. We’re only nine days from Christmas and I’m still finding it difficult to feel “Christmas” like I used to. I think one needs children to experience that old magic. But though I can’t conjure the old Christmas spirit the way I used to feel it, I find that writing this letter to you is a way into the old magic, but with much more subtle tones. Of course, background music helps.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads these long missives I send each year. I know a few people like them, because they tell me. I guess if it makes a difference to a few …it’s worth writing. It’s worth connecting, reaching out. Friendship creates a bond that lasts, even though vast distances and time separate the physical bodies, soul friends always seem close in a timeless sort of way.

Tennessee Williams wrote, “Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.” And isn’t it true that sometimes you can run into someone or pick up the phone after years of separation and feel the same as it did during your last meeting. Love and the ties that bind are timeless. There’s a quiet strength in those bonds that time can’t dilute, and I think that’s why I keep writing.

This year has been good to me. Besides my day job working for the State of Maryland (now in my 21st year), and my tour companies, I’ve focused on home improvements. I was fortunate to find a house that I could afford to improve. It’s kind of like a canvass for me where I paint the framework of my life, creating a kind of sanctuary where I get to live.

I noted this morning that today is the birthday of both Jane Austen and Ludwig van Beethoven. Wow. Such creativity in each of these two geniuses. I’m afraid my only creativity is expressed in home improvements. This year I’ve added a deck, gutters, a new front porch, a fairy garden, an irrigation, two sheds, and a system of pathways though the back yard and a massive number of plantings. I’ve also renovated the bathrooms and had many of the rooms painted. Each improvement for me is like an element in a landscape painting. I feel fortunate to be able to do it, but I still wish I was a real artist … like a painter, or a sculptor… creating something awesome out of nothing. I read that Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was 78. I’m 65 so maybe there’s still hope for me. For now, I decorate.

In 2024 I added two more members to my household family. Most of you will remember, Boris, my orange male cat who showed up at my house shortly after I moved here three years ago. Boris was my healing balm that kept me company during those early years of grief after losing Dan. Good ol’ Boris is still here with me, napping on my lap, begging for treats, and sleeping alongside me. He still occasionally escapes to the outside world to see his old girlfriends and worries me to death until he returns. On January 2nd this year a new little feline showed up. He was a feral gray kitten whose mother had finally left him on his own at about 4 months old. I saw the other feral cats picking on him, so I trapped him, had him neutered and fostered him for adoption. But … it turned out that he was so good for Boris. They were like wine and cheese – – two different flavors perfectly paired. The gray kitten had white tuxedo markings against his dark gray fur, and a gray striped tabby tail. His white neck markings covered his bottom jaw and ran all the way down his chest like a long white beard. I named him Merlin and he’s just about to mark his one-year anniversary with us. He’s a beast now. A 16-pound cat who looks like a lion, but he’s got the heart of an anxious teenager.

Then on Halloween day, I heard a little cry in the backyard. Then it got louder. I finally found the source. A little black kitten who was starving. Like Merlin, she had tuxedo markings. She was so frail and skinny. I assume someone just dropped her in the neighborhood. Being that she was black, and it was Halloween, (and maybe because I have this obsession with ghosty, witchy things) I took this as a sign that she was meant to be with us. So, I took her in. Her name is Raven and she’s a brat. But she fits in with us, and I figure she’ll grow out of that toddler-like behavior. Merlin did. It’s a lot more work, but these kitties are such good company. And they love me. And I them.

My brother called me a Cat Lady. Others have said, “Oh you’re becoming a cat lady.” Or “You’ve finally become a cat lady.” While this doesn’t really bother me, it is perplexing. I know women that have three dogs, but they don’t call them “Dog Ladies.” Oh … and I have two other cats who are outside only. They were part of a feral colony. I trapped them and got them neutered, but when I released them, instead of going back to their former feral digs, they stayed close to my house. So I started feeding them and they now live on my porches … And they each have a heated cat house, a water fountain and they get special food with gravy every day. Their names are Hugo and Cosette…keeping with the Les Mis theme.

Maybe I am a crazy cat lady.

Last fall, I took a wonderful group to the south of Ireland on our “Walk in the Woods” tour. We saw some of the oldest trees in the country including one that has been standing since the reign of the Plantagenet rulers of England. It was a magical tour and my favorite so far of all my different themed Ireland tours. I’ll be going back this April / May with a group looking at the land in relation to the Druids, Saints and Kings that lived across the northern region – then again in the Fall I’ll focus on the West. For me, Ireland is like a spiritual well where I go and am filled with some new revelation or discovery about myself and the world every year. And my tour guests and the people I meet along the way are like jewels that continue to sparkle in my life long after the tours are over.

Most of you know that I lost my husband Dan four years ago, but what you may not know that Dan’s death was the second time that I lost a husband. My husband, Andy died in 1993 when I was just 33 years old. My children were 8, 12, and 14. It was a different set of circumstances being so young and having young children, but the grief was no different.

I recall a very progressive nun counseling me about grief during that first loss. When I told her it had been less than a year she said, “Oh, honey. You’re not even halfway through the fire yet. It takes at least three years to get through the grief.” I recall thinking I couldn’t possibly survive two more years of this… and I barely did. But she was right. There was something about that three-year mark when my life became bearable again. I didn’t cry every day. Photos didn’t set me off. I started doing things that made me happy.

27 years later when I was widowed a second time – Dan. I grieved the same. I’m sure that grief came through in my last few Christmas letters. But the one comfort was knowing (from my previous experience) that it doesn’t last. The rawness and the waves of tears and sadness eventually subside. It’s never the same, but it does get better. And as I’ve passed the three-year mark with the loss of Dan, I am much better. But at this time of year, I feel for those who are still grieving and facing the holidays with a gaping absence in their lives at a time when we remember everything we’ve ever loved. Christmas can bring forth sadness, but it also reminds us that it DOES get better. To feel the promise of that reminder, we need only to see the good deeds around us – the good people – the beauty … all of these are instruments of healing.

One of the most moving stories I read this year was about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I knew he was an American poet famous for the Song of Hiawatha and Paul Revere’s Ride. I also knew that he wrote I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. He wrote it as a poem in 1863 that was eventually edited and set to music and as a Christmas church hymn. I remember having my choir sing it and how weird some of the verses seemed to be sung at Christmas with images of canon fire, hate, death and despair. The text of the hymn is somewhat different than what Longfellow originally wrote, but the story behind the poem is compelling and inspiring. After learning the history, it became more of a Christmas anthem to me.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong, And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Longfellow was a well-recognized poet in mid nineteenth century. By the time he died he was recognized throughout the world and drew an income comparable to $11 million in today’s currency. There is even a tribute to him in Westminster Abbey. But as great as he was, Longfellow didn’t escape terrible tragedy in his life. He also was a two-time widow. His first wife died shortly after miscarrying their first child when she was six months pregnant. He wrote Footsteps of Angels during the waves of grief he suffered after her death. Then he married his wife Fanny with whom he had six children. In 1861 when he was 57 years old and already a well-acclaimed poet, Fanny’s dress caught fire when she was using sealing wax to seal envelopes. Longfellow was napping and awakened by her screaming. He tried to extinguish the fire with a rug and then with his body. Both Fanny and Longfellow were severely burned, but Fanny died the next day of her wounds, and Henry’s injuries kept him from attending her funeral. His grief nearly drove him mad – so much so that he worried he’d be committed to an asylum.

Then two years later in 1863 while the American Civil War was raging, Longfellow’s eldest son, Charly – just 18, enlisted in the Union Army against his father’s wishes. Longfellow was a devout abolitionist but fully opposed the war and Charly entering it. On December 1st of that same year, Longfellow received a telegram that Charly had been severely injured in battle in Virginia. Longfellow immediately headed off to a Washington DC military hospital to be with Charly who had a gunshot wound to the shoulder that had nicked his spine. Permanent paralysis loomed, but Charly had surgery and was able to recover at the Longfellow homestead in Cambridge Massachusetts over the next year.

A few weeks after Charly returned home – on Christmas morning – Longfellow heard the bells ringing in the local church bell tower, and it became a pivotal moment for him. A turning point in his grief. Grief from the loss of his wife, Fanny. Grief from an injured son making a slow recovery. Grief over being the only parent to five minor children. Grief for a country he loved that was at war with itself. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was changed in that moment by the ringing of the bells. He sat down at his desk and wrote the poem Christmas Bells which later became known as I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. And while the poem recounts the despair that plagued him, it also reveals that in the midst of bleak despair when peace, harmony, and good will seem unattainable, there is still hope. Things will get better. Peace will come, love will heal, and the righteous will win out.

In a way, this mirrors what the Christmas story tells us. Peace on Earth Good Will to Men was the song the angels heralded at the birth of Christ the Savior. (Luke 2:14). At the time, the surrounding world was run by haters and usurpers – and this baby, born in the humblest of circumstances – from the lowest class – the most marginalized of people – would change it all. And in the end, those in power did fall — just like all of their ilk eventually do and will continue to do. Meanwhile, we cling to the message of hope and the promise of Christmas. And in our little way, we can create peace and goodwill in our own small spaces in this world. In the end, it all adds up. Every act of kindness counts.

Here’s wishing every one of you a joyous season. May you find peace, reconciliation, hope, and most of all – love this Christmas season.

And I hope that at some moment on Christmas day, you’ll hear some bells – somewhere.

Merry Christmas,

Mindie Burgoyne