The Christmas that stands out most in my memory happened in the year 1949. It was a magical event, and yet one about which I now have mixed feelings. Even with the perspective of more than fifty more Christmases, those feelings remain conflicted and may never find resolution.

At age 21, I was a novice preparing for admission to the ranks of the Jesuits. My life then focused on spiritual perfection and I wanted most to become the model of a life lived in poverty, chastity, and obedience. Cut off from family, friends, and worldly interests, I devoted myself wholeheartedly to a life of austerity in the service of Christ and the Church.

Some 60 other young men were engaged in the same spiritual enterprise with me in those days. We lived and worked at Shadowbrook, a large mansion which sat on the rim of Stockbridge Bowl in Lenox, Massachusetts, and followed together the strict discipline expected of apprentice Jesuits. But we also experienced the joys of a life focused on God, simplified and stripped of the distractions rampant in the world outside.

That was the setting of my Christmas, 1949. On the night before, we novices went to bed early, as usual, in a large dormitory, in cots crowded together. The next thing I knew was, apparently, the voice of angels singing from above the announcement of Jesus’s birth. “Hodie Christus Natus Est,” (“Today Christ is Born”). The music came from a loft that opened out near the ceiling of the dorm. To me, as well as to my fellow first-year novices, the sound was magical as we looked up and saw the choir of senior novices singing with such joy.

Still caught up in the magic of this surprise, we quickly dressed and descended the winding steel stairs to the chapel for midnight Mass. This liturgical celebration , celebrated with unusual solemnity, furthered the joyful feelings stirred by the chorus that had surprised my sleep.

That Christmas belonged to a different universe from the one that I live in now. Though I still deeply value the spiritual life and many of the religious traditions of my youth, the simplicity of my life at Shadowbrook has long since disappeared. It is hard for me to imagine myself given over to the direction of others and to a discipline that demanded uncritical acceptance.

In fact, that Christmas celebration was an event in what I think of as my second childhood. Entrance into the novitiate while still immature for my age induced in me a return to living like someone not grown up. In ceding authority over me to others, I conspired in a loss of my own freedom at a time when it would have been good to explore that freedom.

This is why I still feel somewhat embarrassed about the Christmas of 1949. Many of the good features of the novitiate experience found expression then – – all that intensity of purpose and all that joy  –  – but they came at a price that now seems to me too high.

My daughter is the same age now that I was then. As she comes home for Christmas from living abroad and working in her first job after college, I am struck by how different her life is from what mine was. She is living in the world, while I was living apart in an artificial environment built around rules and traditions. For her, trial and error mark the steps in her advance to maturity but my progress was laid out along carefully prescribed lines. And the particular spirituality that provided all the meaning behind my Jesuit life does not hold nearly the same meaning for her.

Thus the Christmas 2001 that we will be celebrating at home brings together father and daughter of vastly different experience. My world has changed so radically in ways that I could never have dreamed of. No more angelic voices will ring out in the middle of the night for me and no more living by rule will govern my days.

Her world  undoubtedly change, too, and she will be surprised by many of the things that happen within her and take place around her. I am glad for the opportunity she has to find herself further in the real-life conditions of the world as distinguished from the hot-house setting in which I lived at her age. But, even with the embarrassment I feel about my second childhood, I recognize the richness in an experience not available in the so-called real world.

Of course, I have learned to recognize that life is hard in any setting and that every lifestyle has its rewards and its trials. But this year, with its memory of the Christmas of 1949 and the Christmases intervening since, finds me happy with the change I made long ago and the gifts that come with advancing years.

Richard Griffin