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Angela Connelly
Angela Connelly ('87)

œWho says Christmastime has to be perfect? asks Angela (Andersen ™87) Connelly, in a for the News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington.

An alumna, a member of the College™s Board of Governors, and a News Tribune reader-columnist, Mrs. Connolly offers a comical look back at the time she tried to get her nine children to stage a Nativity scene for the family Christmas card. œI managed to get in a couple of pictures before the branch holding James broke, she writes. œMy angel plummeted right into our makeshift manger, almost killing ˜baby Jesus.™

Yet in what she calls œauthentic chaos, there is a certain beauty reflective of the real Nativity:

It is said, œLove means never having to say you™re sorry. As a weathered mama, I disagree. Love means always saying you™re sorry and beginning anew ” embracing each other™s wounded, rustic, imperfect hearts over and over again.

It™s like that very real Christmas, 2,000 years ago, the one that lived and breathed in Bethlehem.

No room in the inn. Really? Only a smelly barn? A homeless, teenage, pregnant girl riding on a donkey in labor? No beautiful layette and crib? Just old sheets and an animal trough? But in that rustic, imperfect, messy world, love, light and a true family were born.

Peace, says Mrs. Connelly,  can be found no matter how difficult the circumstance: œIt™s buried under the stress and the mess, but it™s there, and it comes out in unexpected places.