Being pregnant — nay, expecting — in the Christmas season is about the most wonderful gift I can imagine.

Yesterday evening, K and I put on a CD of peaceful Polish carols, turned off all the lights, and sat in the glow of the Christmas tree, talking about the future.

A pregnant Christmas, like the first Christmas, is a Christmas of promise. It’s the thought of a whole series of Christmases stretching into the future, including toddlers, children, teens, adults, grandchildren — it’s sitting at the beginning of a new tradition. As the generations repeat, so too Christmas, each one following the previous, each different, each connected.

That’s perhaps one of the nicest things about Christmas. It’s a tradition that invites new traditions. It’s a tradition about birth, about humility, about peace, and those are things that are eternal and yet ever-new. They’re things that surprise us and comfort us, like a good Christmas.