For years to come, Christmas 2014 will be associated with the assassination of two police officers in New York City. The act of a vengeful and suicidal man who shot a woman near Baltimore before heading to New York, the deaths of the officers constitute the denouement of a year of heightened racial tensions, doubts about American justice and profound anxiety about who we are and how we treat one another.
Sorry, but there's no getting around that. We are stuck with this reality.
Of course, you can work yourself into a dark mood any Christmas. You can always ponder all that's wrong with your city or your country or the world. And all that's wrong easily trumps the good that the Christian calendar orders us to celebrate — or at least pray for — every December 25.
'Tis not for the short, cold, dark days alone we get depressed, but the abundance of depravity and rancor, anger and mistrust, brutality and violence, all of which was evident this year.
And all of which occurs on the grand concourse of American life, where everyone can see it.
So there's no getting around the public bad.
But what's advised at Christmas — or what happens throughout the year, consciously or unconsciously, because it's probably how humans keep from going mad — is accounting for personal good. There's more than we think. There has to be.
Even people who have had a rough year can sit quietly for a moment on Christmas Day and list a thing or two that kept them from despair. It could be anything, what the Quakers might have called simple gifts: your discovery last winter of a powerful poem, or the appearance in spring of a wild bird you had never seen before. Maybe you had the pleasure of seeing a Matisse painting in person for the first time. Maybe you were at Camden Yards when the Orioles won an extra-inning game. Those were all gifts.
Maybe someone treated you to an exceptional dinner. Maybe something happened — you had a period of illness, or someone close to you died — and you realized how many loving, supportive friends you have.
Maybe an unexpected thank-you note arrived in the mail.
Maybe someone gave you a compliment that made you feel superb.
Maybe someone gave you a second chance.
I recently met a man who runs a high-end landscaping company; he has up to 50 employees in the busiest seasons. Some of his workers are people who needed a break — from chronic poverty, from debilitating cycles of drug abuse or alcoholism, from arrests and prison. Hiring people in recovery, and mentoring them into sound work habits, has become part of his company ethic. It's a quiet, private good incorporated into a business model. Nine times out of 10, the boss says, it works out.
Maybe you were on the receiving end of a kind deed.
One morning in late October, a driver ran a red light at North Avenue and slammed into Kathleen Mason's car, pushing it through the intersection at North Calvert Street into a row of parked vehicles. Mason, who lives in Anne Arundel County, had some minor injuries and "felt terrified." If you've ever been in an accident like that, you know what she means.
You can also appreciate how much it meant to her that another woman, a stranger, showed up and stayed with Mason until an ambulance arrived, calming her with assurances that she'd be fine.
"With all the negative things going on today," Mason's husband, Paul, told me, "this was proof that there are still some fantastic people in this world."
When contacted, the fantastic helpful stranger did not wish to contribute to this account or have her name published. That's not a complaint, just a fact.
Another kind-stranger story showed up in my email box last week, from Ken Rock of Timonium.
On Thursday, Rock and his brother, Drew, took their 79-year-old father, Frank, to Cockeysville for some Christmas shopping. When dad reached for his wallet, it was not there. The brothers retraced their steps and searched their car, the parking lot and the aisles of two large retail stores. They did not find the wallet.
Here's why: Someone had found it and left it with a manager in the first store the men visited. And that's where Ken Rock recovered it, neither cash nor credit cards missing.
He was relieved and surprised. "I know there are good people out there," Rock wrote. "I just wanted to thank the person who saved Mom the problem of replacing everything lost in Dad's wallet. Maybe reading about this incident in your column will make them feel good about their deed and make others think about doing the right thing."
Or maybe it will prompt some accounting of all the personal good we experience even as the public bad engulfs us. If there's anything worth praying for at Christmas it's that we might have a flood of one to wash away the other.