Today was our annual Wolf Trap Sing-along. It is an outdoor Christmas caroling fest at the national park for the arts, just north of us. Thousands of people gather in the amphitheatre, bundled up against the cold to first hear the President’s Own Marine Band, and then sing together Christmas carols for about an hour. I love it for so many reasons. The band is great, with giant green wreathes hanging from the ceiling of the stage. But mostly I love the way people from all over Virginia, people of many denominations, come together year after year and sing at the top of their lungs their praises to the King. With this big band and people singing all around, I always sing with all my heart, not letting any little part of me hold back. I sing soprano, though I am usually an alto. We all sway back and forth when we sing Winter Wonderland, and then there is the most magical moment of all when we begin to sing “Silent Night” and everyone lights a candle. You can look across this vast audience of people, and each one has a candle glowing, rolling back the darkness. We leave with our burning candles as we sing the last verse, and it seems as if all these Christians are bearing their lights on their own individual journeys into the darkness of the world. Though it is the same year after year, we wouldn’t miss it because the feeling is so powerful. It has come to be the essence of the season for me. It is our eighth Christmas doing this and has become an important part of our Christmas tradition in Virginia. We first went our first year here when I was scanning the Internet to find some new Christmas traditions to add to our usual ones since so many of our children were not here—and they left a real hole in the holiday. That year we didn’t know that Wolf Trap was an outdoor arena and went in our Sunday clothes with a thin Sunday coat and no gloves, mufflers or hats. When we saw everyone approaching the stadium with their jugs of hot chocolate, we caught on pretty fast that we were not going to get what we expected. But we went anyway, and people all around us, noticing that we were shivering, passed us blankets and extra gloves and scarves. Such amazing generosity, but what has stood out after all these years is that as were leaving, and I was carrying Michaela, and her bare little legs in a Sunday dress, stuck out. Along came a woman and covered her with a blanket. I told her thank you so much and that we would follow her to the car so that we could give her back her blanket. She said, “Oh no. I’m a grandmother.”

Michaela took that blanket to bed with her for a long time after that and always called it her kindness blanket.