As a child it’s a time of unquestioned magic. Delirious with excitement, we charged about like maniacs while wonderful things fell all around us. Time had no meaning. Everything and everybody was imperishable and glowing, weightless.

As adults, now visited by disappointment and loss, sidetracked and mortal, Christmas has a depth that often feels like weight. Everything ages– we miss people and sometimes, we miss the people we were, too. Vulnerable in ways we never quite imagined, we watch the children now, and knowing that all things change, a subtle undercurrent of nostalgia and melancholy runs through the holiday, and even as we’re living the moment, we’re aware of its passing.

This year, our families were with us, intact and safe.

It’s a stunningly beautiful thing, that, and to consider for one moment all the small, unseen miracles that took place in order to keep us together through the years, distance and unimaginable fires is to be filled with respect and gratitude.

At any rate, all families are miracles, and on this Christmas there were probably around 20 of us sitting around a long, make-shift table. Our two nephews are about 11 and 13 now, and we’ve had the privilege of being close to them and watching them grow.

They look like angels. Talented and mysterious, they hover on a periphery as if a beautiful visitation.

Their parents told us that they wanted to do a small performance after dinner, and when the time came they quietly, shyly, even, stood at the end of the table– one wearing the fur hunting cap that he got for Christmas, the other with bracelets of candy on his thin wrists. Then, after glancing at one another and nodding, they began to snap their fingers in rhythm and sing.

I had never heard them sing before. I’d never even thought about it. And so, right there, something I had never considered, something I had never imagined, was taking place before me. And they sang beautifully. It was utterly stunning, as dislocating and awesome a discovery as if suddenly finding a majestic snow-capped mountain where the 7-11 had always been. It was, I thought, magic.

They were singing the old John Lennon song “Beautiful Boy,” and they were singing it to Jones, our four month old baby boy. They weren’t up there looking for attention or validation, they weren’t pushed by their parents. They were self-directed and acting out of love. It was a pledge, I think, a rite of welcome. Jones would always be protected and loved by everybody in that room and the family beyond. It was such a pure and astonishing moment, so holy, that it felt like time expanded in all directions and was really just one big circle that contained us all.

It was not an easy year for us, but Lord, we were so lucky, and there was Jones, sitting on the lap of his beaming mother, and all around him, for as many years as could be counted, family, each one a loving star in his cosmos.

Over at the bar sat an older man, his hand inside the dress of a young, very drunk woman. Her body was bending and curving into his, grinding and pressing, the bare flesh of her back exposed like a wound. Careful and still as a predator, he was looking past her incoherent eyes to another point in the evening, waiting.

Another man, probably near 60, had a mop of charismatic grey hair and carried with him the manner that suggested a confident expectation that things were going to work out in his favour. He’d talk to anybody, fully expecting that they’d be happy, even flattered, to chat and then move tables to accommodate him. Familiar in an indistinct way and able to immediately establish a hierarchy within the place, he had the aura of celebrity.

He turned out to be John McDermott, a Scottish-Canadian tenor and sort of middle of the road performer that your parents might really like.

Incongruously, accompanying him were a group of 20-something Bros, all dressed like they were ready for a night of poker and drinking in a buddy’s kitchen. There was a raw, unkind edge to them and they were treating McDermott like he needed them more than the other way around. They were egging him on, and in short order the room was called to silence and John McDermott sang Danny Boy for us while his crew, holding cell phones in front of their faces like masks, took disinterested videos while continuing their snickering conversations with one another.

The singing was lovely, and many people looked like they felt blessed to have been present for such a spontaneous gift. But still, there was something mechanical and imposed about it, like we were tourists who had just been taken advantage of by sneering locals who now expected us to pay.

I wanted to clear my head a bit from this and stepped out on the balcony. The city was soft, fuzzy and fog-lit, the skyline glowing.

Near me on the railing arrived one of McDermott’s young crew. He was wearing a black hoodie and had a smudge of a moustache on his upper lip, and rocking his body back and forth he pulled deeply from the back of his throat and horked over the side and down to the street 18 floors below. He then went into the bar and proceeded to talk the really drunk woman away from the older, predatory man, bringing her back to his group, a trophy now, for all of them to enjoy.