Growing up in a small town in the UP, I thought almost everyone was Finnish or Ojibwe (or both: Finndian). And at Christmas, I liked feeling that our whole town was coming together as a community. I would hop from playing the piano for a Christmas Eve service at my Lutheran church to joining a friend at a Methodist service, and would find myself thinking of everyone else in town worshipping that night in celebration of the Christ Child’s birth. I’d picture everyone’s carols rising straight up to the stars amid the wood smoke of our houses. Continue Reading