ecause Christmas doesn’t make any sense!” The words hung in the air, and he regretted them. But maybe it was better this way – sharp, clean, final.

He’d explained before how he felt, on other Christmas Eves when she’d asked him to go with her.  This Jesus whom she loved in her quiet way had indeed been a great man, perhaps the greatest who ever lived.  But to believe that he was the son of God – or somehow God himself, in human form – went against all reason.

          "I'm sorry," he said more gently.  "If you could just once show me why God, if there is such a being, would ever want to become a man, I'd go gladly."

          She had tried once; he'd demolished her arguments. Now, as he helped her on with her coat and raised the garage door for her, he avoided her eyes.

          The house seemed unusually quiet after she left. He wandered from room to room, turned on the TV, turned it off again.  He paused in the dining room, seldom used now that the children were gone, and stared out the window.  In the illumination of the backyard flood­light, the stiffening wind was driving icy needles of new snow.

          Shuddering, he started to turn away, when out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement: on the fast-whitening ground, a wind-buffeted sparrow was foraging for stray seed under the bird-feeder.

If there was one thing he loved other than his wife, it was birds.  He cursed himself for not having fixed the squirrel guard on the bird-feeder; those wily marauders cleaned it out as fast as he refilled it.

          There was more movement – a flock of sparrows, disoriented in the rising storm, had joined the one on the ground. He glanced at the outdoor thermometer. The mercury was approaching zero; if those birds did not find food soon. . . .

          Donning his parka, he slipped out into the dark garage. It was cold; he’d forgotten to close the door. He reached for the button, then hesitated. He didn’t want to startle them. Easing the lid off the large pail of birdseed, he took up a scoopful and went out into the night.

Careful to stay in the shadows, he worked his way upwind, then cast the seed into the air, so it would fall among the sparrows. Yet they could find only a few kernels, before the fast-falling snow obliterated the rest.

          Hurrying back to the garage, he returned with the entire pail, flinging scoopful after scoopful into the night, only to see it vanish before they could find it.

Trembling with fatigue, he stopped to catch his breath. "I know!” he gasped. “I'll put seed in the garage and turn its light on!"

          Returning to the garage, he threw the remaining seed all over the concrete floor. What a mess, he thought. But if it works. . .

Going inside, he turned off the backyard floodlight, then turned on the garage light. Through the cracked door to the garage, he watched and waited for the sparrows to come in and eat.

But they did not understand. There, in plain sight, was food and shelter – yet they stayed out in the darkness. 

          Slipping out the side door, he came up behind the birds to shoo them towards the garage. Yet all he succeeded in doing was scaring them into surrounding trees.

As soon as he went back inside, they returned to the ground under the bird-feeder. They seemed to sense there was help there some­where. . . .

          He went back out and tried again, with the same result. Shaking, he stood by the bird-feeder, tears in his eyes. "Oh, God!" he cried, "Why won't they understand? Every-thing they need is right there!” he pointed to the lighted garage, “But they won't see it! If only I were a bird myself, I could show them. I could lead them in there and – "

     His eyes widened, as he realized what he had just said.     ÿ