In my Christmas Eve sermon, I noted that sometimes the best gift isn’t the most expensive present but the least expected one. I experienced that in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the first Christmas that my wife and I were married. She had remembered an offhand comment from me about a fascination with astronomy. The least expensive present for me under the Christmas tree that year was a book called NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe. I loved it and felt like a kid again outside, under the celestial canopy. The photo shows a later edition because the original gift was used so much that it started to fall apart.

So let’s write haiku about gifts from Christmas past, Christmas present, or Christmas future. Just create one verse with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the third line. Here’s mine:

Her gift brought to mind
“the Love that moves the sun and
the other stars.” Wow.

Earlier this week, for our first annual Christmas lunch, I took my church staff to a restaurant called Canopy on Montrose Boulevard in Houston. The biggest surprise was the awesome, Star Wars-themed sweater that one of our colleagues, pictured below, wore to the celebration. Yes, the Morning Star dispels even the dark side. That’s good news for the whole universe, including Darth Vader. Seriously.

Christmas sweaters — whether ugly or awesome — are this week’s haiku theme. Take one of those images, or perhaps a memory of something that happened while you were wearing one of these, and write a verse about it with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.

John Lindsay, a former mayor of New York City, died 14 years ago today on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where I was the curate at All Saints Episcopal Church. Soon thereafter I was asked to come to the funeral home to pray with a widow and her family without knowing that it was Mayor Lindsay’s family. I said that I was happy to do so but mentioned that it happened to be the day of our staff Christmas party and that I was, therefore, wearing a Christmas sweater instead of my usual priestly clothes. Sitting with that family, wearing a festive green and red sweater while clinging to my stole and Book of Common Prayer, seemed both weird and wonderful all at the same time. “Comfort, comfort my people,” writes Isaiah.

When John Lindsay died,
I — in a Christmas sweater —
prayed with his widow.

Earlier this week I wrote about my family’s recent trip to the Houston Zoo at night to see the Christmas zoo lights. They were spectacular, which isn’t really surprising because there were over two million lights to behold. At the other end of the spectrum is the theory that less is more. Enter “Blinkies,” a variation on twinkling Christmas lights that someone created in my hometown of Kernersville, North Carolina. This video shows Blinkies in the trees along Main Street in Kernersville. They do seem to have a soothing effect during a stressful season, don’t you think?

So this week’s haiku theme is Christmas lights, holiday lights, zoo lights, etc. Do you prefer to illuminate both the night sky and the windows of your next door neighbors? Do you choose instead to place one electric candle in each of the front windows, hearkening back to early American simplicity? Wherever you fall on that spectrum, tell us about it by writing one verse with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.

My haiku refers both to the house that I knew as a child and to the Christmas Eve candlelight services at Home Moravian Church in the City of Winston-Salem:

Candles in windows
and a Moravian star
over the door. Home.