Helen was a bit of an anomaly on the street where I grew up. For starters, Helen went to work every day at a real job in the city. She and her husband, Stan, didn’t have children. In fact, theirs was an unconventional marriage. Whatever that meant. Details remained hazy on why Stan didn’t always live at the house, but it might have explained why they didn’t go all out to deck the halls. Not to mention that Helen’s Christmas treats were along the lines of stale chewy coconut candy. Helen doesn’t know what children like, my parents said, as Dad unfolded his handkerchief for us to spit the candy in.

Helen took a no-nonsense approach to her Christmas decorating, but decorate she did in her own unconventional way. Stan would arrive in his Cadillac, but without a Christmas tree tied to its roof or sticking out of its trunk. In just a few minutes, Stan would put up the tree in the front window, and Helen would finish the decorating, then hang a white wreath with blue ornaments on the front door. Stan, chomping on his ever-present cigar, would give a nod of approval and take off to wherever.

It was that tree in the front window that fascinated me. It wasn't just artificial. Helen's tree was silver and lit by an on-the-floor color wheel. At night from my bedroom window at the front of the house, I would watch Helen’s Christmas tree magically change colors glowing from yellow to blue to red to green—without synchronized music. I. never tired of watching it.

Long after we unplugged the lights on our Christmas tree and the other houses on the block had gone dark, Helen’s tree remained lit through the cold December nights, the color wheel turning and shining light into the darkness through the night—and more like Christmas than the now dark, heavily decorated tree that sat in our living room like odd shadows in the sleepy nighttime.

Christmas is a color wheel of light in the hands of people who were anomalies.

There's Mary, the possibly tween girl who submits herself to the Lord and the angel spoke to her. What color light was that? Golden yellow.

There’s advanced-in-years Zechariah, when after months of silence, turns the color wheel, and a sunrise is visiting us from on high, and with another spin of the wheel, this sunrise will give light to those who sit in darkness.

What about Bethlehem, the hometown with no room for the God who made it to be born, save that one innkeeper who could make room among the lambs and kids and cubs and calves for one more newborn. The wheel spins with just barely color at all when the sun went down.

Then shepherds in the field shepherding when the color wheel spun out of control—glory, light, angel of the Lord, multitude of the heavenly host, and singing of good news of great joy. When the angels went back to heaven, I wonder if a few of the shepherds lingered for a moment as the light dissipated in the darkness that didn’t appear as dark as it once did. What color was that glory?

With one final turn, the color wheel lights the greatest anomaly of all—a baby who is the Word become flesh, God with us, welcoming us to receive and believe in him, which on second thought might be the greatest anomaly of all—sinners now children of God.