The girls cram into the back seat, Che sitting in Laurel's lap and 13 year old Cassidy stuffed into the car seat for reasons unknown.
Sarah's driving because she always drives, finding it difficult to relinquish control lest she sit in the passenger seat where she's transformed into a very opinionated road Marshall, so I occupy the right side of the car, holding a drink in one hand while fiddling with the radio with the other.
A few minutes into the ride it's obvious most decorations are still in boxes resting in attics or garages.
Laurel begins making promises to take Che for a ride around the neighborhood in two weeks after everyone's had ample chance to decorate their homes, though it's a joke because at 15 she can't drive yet, though she's forever asking to practice.
Sarah opts to leave the mostly dark neighborhood and drive an even darker stretch of Bryan Wood Road with forests on both sides of the street.
"Needs lights," I quip.
"That'd be cool," Laurel, always ready to engage in a prank, agrees.
"That is so cool," Sarah exclaims. "There'd be great lights for the runners on the trail and you could write inspirational sayings and ... wait! Where would we hook up to electricity?"
We drive into the pitch black darkness broken only by the promise of a red light at the Johnny Mercer intersection.
"That's what the first Christmas was like," I tell myself.
Complete darkness.
We've corrupted the miracle with illuminated plastic manger scenes, hundreds of outdoor lights, inflatable Santa's and glowing Reindeer yard art.
That's modern Christmas but the first one was ... in the dark.
There's no electricity in ancient Bethlehem, which isn't much of a crowded town the way we imagine it today, but a tiny village without hotels, restaurants or bars.
There's no night life.
In those days when the sun comes up and you can see, it's time for work. When the sun sets, work's over because it's too dark to see, so before night completely falls, you eat as quickly as possible, do whatever you can by candle light (if you have them) and sleep until the sun comes up again and you start over.
Everyone works to get by, everyone's poor, everyone has little to share so when family comes to town, as Joseph and Mary do, they crowd inside the house of relatives.
Remember the Government's conducting a census forcing everyone to return to their ancestral home to be "counted."
Bethlehem homes then are mostly two story dwellings with bedrooms upstairs and a lower level with a kitchen, living quarters and where the animals are kept.
The lower levels have a built in manger because livestock are kept inside protecting them from the elements and theft. Inside they provide body heat for warmth, milk for nourishment and dung to dry out and burn in the fireplace.
Livestock of any kind is precious commodity.
So when Joseph and Mary show up because the Government says so, there's no stable out back though there is a manger inside the house where the animals eat and drink.
And in the crowded, smelly, uncomfortable darkness, "she gave birth to her firstborn, a son, wrapping him in cloths and laying him in a manger ..." (Luke 2:7).
Who knows what else, if anything, happened that night?
Luke goes on to say there are Shepherds nearby who possibly mistake a Baby crying as a choir of Angels singing while Matthew reports three Wise Men arrive from the East bearing gifts.
Neither matter very much to the story.
What does matter is what happens in the dark.
There's something God likes about the dark.
In the very beginning of Genesis, the Lord hovers over the water in the dark and creates ... LIGHT!
Can you imagine the crazy shock of it all?
All the world's ever known is the black night until God snaps her fingers and POOF! in a second everything is crystal clear.
Fast forward in the Biblical story to the crucifixion of Jesus. He's lifted on the cross at nine in the morning and the world immediately falls dark until around three in the afternoon as though God's re-booting everything but as the body's taken down, the sun comes out.
Then there's my favorite, with Peter and some others fishing in the dark after Jesus is buried, not catching a damn thing, making them further question their existence, because though they may not have been the best Disciples they know how to fish ... at least they always did, until this day.
But across the dark water, they suddenly spy the soft dim glow of a small charcoal fire on the Beach with a shadowy figure beside it yelling, "Caught anything?" adding insult to injury.
"No," they grimly reply.
"Try again," the shadow instructs and when they do fish literally jump into the boat.
And out of the tiny glow on a dark Beach it's more than nets that are filled but people full of hope as they row as fast as humanly possible, dragging more fish than they know what to do with, to find Jesus ready to eat.
And on the first Christmas, there's even less light to see the baby laying in a dirty manger, the pungent aroma of donkey shit rising from the floor, other guests sleeping during delivery ... perhaps there a candle or torch but it wouldn't surprise me if Jesus wasn't born in complete darkness, just the way God liked it before light burst into the world for the first time.
"I am the light of the world," Jesus later says, "whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).
As we enter this Christmas Season, if you're having a hard time finding the lights because the world's so full of darkness, filling the Newspapers and online chat groups, occupying the great Halls of Government, Justice and Religion, and taking root in our own hearts too, filling us with doubt, insecurity and fear to be loved and accepted as we really are, remember that everything God ever does begins in the darkness.
"You can't have a light without a darkness to stick it in," we're fond of saying, so grab hold of the darkness in your life and know that's where God's likely been waiting on you this whole time, so that NOW you can finally find your light!
