There are all kinds of Christmas kisses.
Some, like a child's brush-like kiss on your cheek, thanking you for being Mommy and Daddy, or Pop-Pop and Nanny, hold within them the soft ancestry of a butterfly kiss. Gentle caring quick kisses that leave a small mark saying: “I love you. I am safe with you. I am glad you are here.”
There are the older adult version of the same kiss too. When little boys and girls who were children it seemed- just yesterday, are now full grown adults with their own children. When your son (or daughter) is now as old as you were when you got married, well, they brush your cheek with the same butterfly ancestry and say: “Merry Christmas, Mom.” And it is.
The Christmas Kiss I want to tell you about exists all over the world. Yet it lives in only one place- your memory.
This kiss is so common as to be rare. For this kiss is given- as a gift -by every heart that was in love when the kiss was accepted. It is a kiss that needs two lips, two hearts, and two futures in front of it. Sometimes, if you are lucky, and live long enough, the order is reversed: it still take two lips, two hearts, but it is a kiss with so much past behind it, that it melts into the future too.
Usually the Christmas Kiss is a gift for the young, either at heart, or in time. It is usually (but not always) born in the first experience of loving someone so much, that they appear to have no faults. It is a kiss that says in its very soft touch, and lingering taste: “ I cannot believe you are in my life. Thank you. What a gift you are.” It is a kiss that is not quite bereft of passion, but bends the will towards a hug and affection, and away from mere physical arousal. It is the kind of kiss that puts the word Romance in Romantic. It is shared, not owned by either person sharing it. It can’t be taken back, nor can it be given to another. It was, when it was born, unique. It stays that way.
The Christmas Kiss in full blossom is not afraid of Mistletoe, or an audience. It isn’t limited by number, or quantity, but very strict in quality. A Christmas Kiss is not burdened by any of the negative thoughts of any previous bumps, detours, or delays on the road to True Love. It is- by necessity, the gatherings of all that is good, trusting, and open between two people in love, and therefore is wholly in the present moment. There is not time in a Christmas Kiss, and while it is being shared, time stops. When the time is up, the kiss lives on.
Christmas Kisses ( of the variety I am talking about) do not wait for Christmas Day, but are free to engage in their special Magic any time at all, from about Thanksgiving, until the New Year. Nor are they restricted to a single event. You can have hundreds of them, if your love is growing by the day, as it often does when young. But each kiss contains the certainty that you are , in deed, in love. And each kiss contains so much power, that both partners must hang on to each other and rest. That is the Christmas Kiss Hangover, and it has a name too: A hug. A hug that borders on a caress, and squirms with delight. When the arms drop, and they finally do, it is only to let the hands join.
In the soft glow of Christmas Tree lights, the hands are silhouetted by either the lights, or the fireplace embers. That is when the couple leans, shoulder to shoulder, head to head, side by side. Letting the warm glow of a Christmas Kiss dissipate - as it must, before they can return to the world where Love doesn’t sparkle in the soft touch, and fluffy fullness of a Christmas Kiss.
And now, one of your Christmas Kisses has surfaced, to bring time back to a time- savor it for a while, smile, sigh, and surrender to the memory. Today:2
