Christmas at Home with Music and Family

Christmas at home in Grand Rapids this year, everybody in the living room by the piano with the knitted stockings out — the ones with names worked right into them, jingle bells sewn on. They get worn on arms as much as anything else.

Presents went around: two boxes of drinking glasses held up like trophies, a knit hat with braided ear flaps that stayed on for a while afterward, a black and grey quarter-zip sweater stretched out at arm's length for approval.

The best part came later, when the wrapping paper was done with. Somebody sat down at the piano and somebody else got the French horn out, and they worked through the carols from the book on the music stand — the same Christmas books that live on the piano this time of year. Horn and piano together in the living room, which is not something we get every day.

Nobody was in a hurry to be anywhere else.