The music was culminating to its purpose, to the moment of decision, to a crossroads. I sat in the local theater with friends on either side of me, popcorn long cast aside, tears welling as we watched the two witches from Wicked on the screen make their lifelong decision. If you are aware of the Wizard of Oz, you are well aware that these two witches do not team up– that their fate is to be apart, and tragically opposed. But in that moment of the movie as I leaned forward in my seat and the future Wicked Witch of the West extended an invitation to Glinda the Good to join her in her fight against injustice– though I had seen the show on stage four times and know what happens even if I hadn’t seen Wizard of Oz a thousand times as a kid– I held my breath.

“Come with me,” she says.

And in the pause, I heard it. In the back of the theater, a small fervent voice called out to the screen–

“Say YES!”

It rattled the lump in my throat and I cried then. Because I know the story. Because seconds later, Glinda says “no.”

But mostly because for a split second, there was the commandment of a small person calling into the same old story that there could be another ending.

Say YES!

This is the voice of hope that haunts me now.

The temperature in New Hampshire this week has not exceeded 30 degrees. We managed a white Christmas and a wintry dreamscape worthy of the December picture on a wall calendar. Last Saturday, we gathered with our community across the river in Vermont on Solstice Day before dark, and caroled around the neighborhood to nursing home facilities and to the homes of people shut-in due to illness, age, or heartache.

We finished the trail at Rowe & Laurie’s home, where they had prepared three kinds of soup and a spread of snacks that were quickly raised to higher tables when Poppy the golden lab arrived with John & Carolyn. The temperature was 8 degrees, but the home was warm with a wood stove, and soon everyone removed their layers and boots and still had rosy cheeks from the heat. Emmy & Rick read a solstice poem after the last guest arrived, and together we sang a rewrite of O Holy Night that I’d penned to be Solstice themed. We talked of the significance of the darkest day, of remembering that it only gets lighter from here– and that while the light in itself is hopeful, the greater hope is that on the longest night of the year, we have gathered with others to make sure we are all okay.

And we were all okay.

When it was time to go, I began bracing myself for the outdoors, calculating what drop in temperature may have already taken place in the couple of hours we’d spent here. I shivered a bit as I put on my boots and said offhandedly to Catherine, “Oh, it’s cold out there.”

And Catherine smiled and said, “Yes, it’s wonderful. With the way the world is heating up, I am always so grateful for a good, cold day. I just welcome it.”

Say yes, I thought.

We know how the story is going. We know that the polar bears are dying and the people of Greenland are worried that the ice will soon be so far melted that they can no longer live there and survive as they have for centuries. We know we are well past the point of reversal, that the wildfire smoke is a new season as winter used to be. But on these freezing nights, Catherine is not thinking of her inconvenience of heavy coats and layers and boots, she is calling into the story with glasses fogging from her breath–

Say YES.

I entered the night with a deep breath. The iciness hit my lungs, and I pulled the air in deeper. Then I calculated the ways in which I have done a poor job recycling this year. I could do better. I will. It would not reverse the story of our climate any more than gathering with loved ones on the 21st of December will bring the light any sooner. But if I say yes, I could at least find a little good, and a little more comfort for the people around me. It could lead to hope.

What I learned this season is that while Solstice celebrators seemed to bring joy to the world, Christmas only brings the cranks. The Solstice rewrite of O Holy Night went up on to the internet as a small welcome to the season, and was primarily met with tidings of comfort and joy.

And then, as the internet is Pandora’s Box, in came an onslaught of frightened people who called my Someone and I blasphemers, new age garbage, and “woke at its worst.” We closed our eyes and imagined our younger selves, who may have also sided with this perspective. We attempted to rationalize, encouraging them to be kind, take a breath, and perhaps remember that this is more about them than it is about us. I minded my tone, and recognized that theological and ideological debates feed the ego, but rarely feed the hungry. And that’s when I realized– Christmas is not at war with Solstice. People are at war with themselves.

Because Christmas at its Christian formation was a holiday about Saying Yes. It is about making room for the unexpected, making space for the stranger, making a literal room at the inn for people who are showing up at your door unannounced. It is about Saying “Yes, please take what is mine and make it yours.”

It is about Saying, “Yes, there is no mine and yours.”

And for this reason, people will find a way to feed their ideas of scarcity– pouncing on folk singers for taking “their” songs instead of taking that bundle of Christmas gift money and donating it a local shelter. Defending their nostalgia for a song in the name of God gives an untouchable righteousness unmatched by holiday cheer– and certainly avoids the risk of Saying Yes to what their chosen holiday actually means.

Welcome the stranger.

Say Yes.

And in this way, I found more empathy– mildly tempered with my own self-righteousness, certainly. But I’m working on Saying, “Yes, I hear that this song is important to you. Yes, you are welcome here anyway. Yes, you are loved when you are unable to love. Yes, come with me, come along, we could change this together.”

I know how the story goes. But I can still hope.

After the movie, Annie and I headed to the bathrooms and waited in line. I told her about the small voice I heard in the theater at the crucial moment. She took a deep breath and teared up.

“That’s just amazing,” she said, “because we all know how the story goes.”

I did know, especially for Annie. She and her spouse have been hurt in immeasurable ways by their former church communities in the last couple of years. Some of their closest friends have abandoned them for safer ideas about who is “in” and who is not.

“For me,” Annie continued, “it makes me hopeful, because I would just assume that your friends are going to tell you ‘no,’ that they aren’t going to come with you.”

I was struck at this moment, toilets flushing in the background, the smell of stale popcorn in the air, that Annie was more hopeful than she realized. For the week, she and her spouse spent the night in our home. While we were friends who met once a year for work, we weren’t close friends. And in the midst of complete relational desolation, she had taken my invitation to come. The week had been in every way perfect– the conversation, the shared food, the unfettering of our hearts. She had no reason to trust me when I said, “Come with me.” But she said yes. And it had been worth it. I didn’t know how to explain this to her– that her unbeknownst healing had also healed me.

So instead, I just repeated, “Say yes.”

“Say yes,” she said back to me.

And in this case, the story changed.