By Jane Gordon Julien
December 1, 2025
A biting wind blew the night of Christmas eve, 1963, in New York City.
The old European-style Catholic church, grand in its soaring stained-glass windows and shadowy side altars of flickering tea-lights, towered across the street from their house.
They could see the spire from their front stoop. One needed to look past the institutional brick elementary school where the children went each day, past the courtyard, past the alley into the bigger courtyard on 130th Street that led to the front of the church.
They were expected at church that night. The Christmas pageant promised a procession of kindergarteners in gossamer gowns. The children were to ferry candles up the main aisle to the altar. Gingerly.
But their kindergartener was frail. Thin, pale, only two years out of the hospital after three in with pneumonia. The sterile hospital, the tent, the breathing equipment, the somber voices. “Take her home,” the doctor said. The mother and father knew what he meant. To die.
Surrounded by her brothers and sisters, by laughter and chaos and fighting and plopping on the worn living room rug in front of the TV to watch “Million Dollar Movie” each Sunday, by servings of her mother’s beef stew on Wednesdays and fish on Friday because the church demanded it, by feasts of roasts with mashed potatoes and green beans on Sunday afternoons, by visits from grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles by the carload, she revived.
That night, her parents stood in the compact living room, flanked by a TV on one side, fat upholstered chairs on the other, and studied her. “Maybe we should keep her home, to be safe,” the mother said.
“Please let me go,” the child begged. “We’ve been practicing for weeks. Please.” She looked so small, so sickly. The mother glanced down at the flimsy pink gown the child wore, a dress as thin as paper. Thinner.
The father dropped to his knees, to the child’s height. He smiled, a reassuring smile. “We’ll get you there,” he said. He helped her into a wool coat that dropped to her ankles. He picked up a thick wool blanket from the sofa. “We’ll wrap you in this,” he said. “That’ll do it.”
When he was done, only her eyes peeped out. They were a luminous blue-green, a shock of color in an otherwise pale face. He wrapped the blanket so tightly that her body was straitjacketed. He held her over his broad shoulders. She murmured “thank you,” the words muffled in the wool stretched across her tiny lips.
In silence he hurried out the door, into the freezing night. Straight through the open gate of the chain-link fence. Straight through to the church’s massive double doors. She was a stiff package, staring from one end of the street to the other, delighted at being so high in the air.
He strode into the church, cradling his precious cargo as a firefighter cradles a child scooped from a burning building. He settled her on the floor of the vestibule. He unwrapped her, slowly, as one unwraps a glass Christmas ornament.
He patted her hair.
Her eyes met his. “Thank you, Daddy.” This time, he heard her.
A nun in a long black habit handed her a lit candle. The child’s face was serious, intent, as she gripped it. Hers was one of hundreds flickering throughout the church, in children’s hands, on side altars, on the high stage below the massive cross. Jesus hung from it, eyes low and pained. The haze of smoke from the candles fed a mystical, mysterious aura that settled over the pews.
She stepped into her place in the procession and moved up the aisle with the other children. The swaying reminded him of a waltz he had seen when he was much younger. He stood at the end of the big aisle and watched her waiflike figure reach the altar, then sidle to her place on the side. She turned, the smallest of turns, searching for him. He nodded.
Success.
He grinned then. His fleshy cheeks rose, his rosy lips stretched across an even rosier face, his eyes grew misty.
She felt her blood rise. She adored her father. He was a good father, as human as anybody else. But good.
When she was older in years, long after he was gone, she remembered that night. The sensation of being warm in her father’s arms as he crossed 128th Street. Of seeing the magic strobes of candlelight reflected in the faces of the saints in those big windows. Of the hundreds of worshippers in their wool sweaters and boots, hats above heads, scarves wrapped around faces, gloves pulled tight. And her friends beside her as they floated up the aisle, adrenaline and excitement keeping them warm on the frigid winter’s night.
But mostly, she remembered her father gripping her tight against his shoulder, of being loved. Safe. Warm. She could still picture him, young and strong and sure, holding her close, as he sidestepped the cracks of that New York City street to get her where she wanted to be.