For three years, repeatedly without fail, I have witnessed a phenomenon around this time of the year. I will wholeheartedly welcome the name-calling bordering on the delusional. Even entertain the suggestion that I could possibly be trumped up on a strong psychedelic drug or perhaps may have even ingested something with hallucinogenic properties unbeknownst to me. The point is, it will not seriously have any bearing, no real indictment on the whole experience whatsoever.

Guys, I’m telling you, I know what I have seen. Soberly! To put it emphatically, whether you choose to believe me or not.

All of this coincides with the moment I made the conscious decision to participate presently in the spirit of the times five years after the fact, five years after her passing, funnily albeit interestingly.

This marvel is the fireplace at home.

Oh! Another interesting detail I should add is that her memorial portrait hangs, yep! You guessed right, on a wall near the fireplace.

I need you to really hear me when I say that the fireplace at home waxes strongly around this time of the year whenever the door opens for a loved one, a friend or even the grumpy 67-year-old next door to usher them into the foyer of our home. You would not believe me if I told you I watched keenly, seated near or just in sight, to observe the noticeable change in heat whenever this happened.

For a doubting Thomas such as I, this whole schtick the fireplace has going throws me for a loop every time. Because there have been countless occasions existing in this same three-year period where this same fireplace has been lit up, and yet, nothing of the sort I described happened.

Earlier this year, at Serwaa, my little niece's christening after-party, such a moment transpired.

It was surprisingly cold.

I bet if she were still with us, she would have mocked the climate warriors. She called them by that name. She would have mocked them about their downing tools in the fight and gone so far as to imply that Mother Nature was both chiding and requisitioning them with her chilly gaze to keep waving the flag. She had a twisted yet winsome sense of humour.

Anyway, as always on cold days, this day was no different; I had warmed the flue—leaving the fireplace door open for approximately 10 minutes to prevent cold air from quenching the flames. I had freshly dried and seasoned logs cut up already in the backyard, went out back and brought a fresh pile after clearing the old ones.

Sometimes I wish I could get roots of juniper to add, just to see if the room feels like a sauna. I read somewhere, after reading Psalms 120, about the roots being able to create fierce long heat, but I digress.

Repeating the arrangement of stacking the larger logs at the base with the medium pieces in the middle and the kindling on top, I set a match into the kindling to allow heat to rise for a better fire. I noticed flickers of fire and adjusted slightly the closest window to the fireplace to let in the fresh air. We had liftoff after providing an extra oomph by rolling up some old papers into a cone shape and lighting them before holding them near the damper to prime the chimney further.

I would not bore you with the details of the time spent tending to the fire and prodding the logs.

All this, of course, happened before they even set up the banner for Serwaa.

Time has flown by like it has been doing since the first day of October eight years ago, the day she passed away.

I watched the fire, like a guard dog, as friends and family came and went, yet nothing, not even a negligible fluctuation of the steady visible flame, talked less of the heat.

This put to death that peradventure my mind was playing tricks. If anything, I had to seriously consider the possibility that something was going on, something alien to normal was taking place right under my nose.

Is it that the fire in there is sentient and sapient and chooses only to show signs of sentience and sapience to mess with me? What a twisted sense of humour (wait a minute! Who does this remind me of?), if you ask me. Or is it a Christmas miracle, one from her, performed by God to tell me that both of them are very much there?

Questions! Endless questions!

So that my sceptical mind might be pacified, I hypothesised that the fireplace was not only sentient but capable of high-level reasoning, ergo my prior assertive questioning that I was being played like a fiddle and thus investigated accordingly.

I was in for a clear outcome that some of you may have already predicted.

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Tis The Season: A Christmas Miracle 1