Gift of God
The snow falling on the city of Krasno was indifferent to the war. It blanketed the gutted skeletons of apartment blocks and the rusted hulks of tanks with the same impartial pristine white. Twelve-year-old Amina watched the flakes drift past her taped-up window pane, shivering slightly in her layered sweaters. Before the conflict, this time of year smelled of roasted chestnuts and pine resin. Now, it smelled of damp concrete, cordite, and fear.
Yet, a stubborn defiance bloomed in Krasno. Against the monochrome backdrop of the occupation, tiny sparks of colour emerged. A string of battery-operated fairy lights flickered in the neighbour’s shattered storefront. Someone had tied a red ribbon to the lamppost that stood miraculously bent but unbroken in the town square.
It was Christmas Eve. The global news, filtered through crackling radios, spoke of unrest everywhere, borders closing, treaties failing, a world seemingly addicted to conflict. But here, in the shivering heart of a contested zone, the insistent promise of peace that Christmas represented felt less like a comforting blanket and more like an act of rebellion against the prevailing darkness.
Dim Reality and Festival
Amina turned away from the window to the dim reality of their basement apartment. The silence in the room was heavy, shaped by the absence of her father. It had been six weeks since he left to volunteer near the front lines to help evacuate civilians. Six weeks of static on the phone line, of unanswered texts, of Mama sitting at the kitchen table staring at his empty chair until her tea went cold.
Mama was currently out, braving the bitter wind to scrub floors at the makeshift hospital, desperate for the meagre wages that bought potatoes and stale bread. Amina was alone with her spiralling thoughts when a sharp knock rattled the door.
It was Sarah, Amina’s best friend. Sarah was a swirl of chaotic energy, an aid worker's daughter originally from Australia, now displaced within this volatile region just like everyone else. She tumbled inside, shaking snow from her oversized coat, her usually bright face shadowed.
"It’s bad out there, Ami," Sarah whispered, rubbing her frozen hands together. "And not just here."
Sarah had just managed to get a signal from home. She spoke rapidly, her voice tight, relaying news from Australia about recent, horrific violence against Aboriginal communities, a stark reminder that injustice wasn't confined to active war zones. "It feels like the whole world is bleeding out," Sarah said, her voice cracking. "Everywhere you look, people are just hurting each other. Why?"
Amina looked at the small, chipped ceramic nativity set her grandmother had saved from the shelling last year. The baby Jesus looked ridiculously fragile, a tiny piece of clay against a world of steel and fire. The news Sarah brought felt like the final stone crushing Amina's fragile hope.
"How can we celebrate?" Amina asked, her voice hollow. "How can we pretend a loving God exists when Papa is gone, and people are dying here, and people are dying in your home, and nobody stops it?" The Christmas lights in the neighbour's window suddenly seemed mocking, a foolish gesture in the face of overwhelming brutality.
When Mama returned, her face grey with exhaustion, she sensed the despair thick in the air. She looked from Sarah’s tear-stained cheeks to Amina’s stony expression.
"We will not do this," Mama said firmly, setting down a small, pathetic bag of bruised apples. "Evil wants us to despair. That is how it wins without firing a shot. Tonight is Christmas Eve. We will celebrate. Even if it is just with apples and water."
It was a frantic, desperate kind of planning. They moved with manic energy to hold the darkness at bay. Sarah strummed a guitar with three strings, playing off-key carols. Amina cut paper snowflakes from old newspapers, trying to ignore the headlines about troop movements as her scissors sliced through them. They were building a fortress out of flimsy traditions.
The Turning Point
Late that afternoon, while Mama was bartering with a neighbour for a cup of sugar, an envelope was slipped under their door. It bore no stamps, only Amina’s name scrawled in shaky charcoal.
Inside was a single page torn from a field notebook.
Dear Child, it began. You do not know me. I was a soldier once, in a different war, a lifetime ago. I see the shadows in your eyes when I pass you in the street. I have seen what war does, how it eats the soul.
Amina’s hands trembled. The letter described horrors, things that made her stomach churn. But then the tone shifted.
I thought hope was a lie for fools. Until one Christmas in a frozen trench, an enemy soldier across the line threw a pack of cigarettes over to us. We threw back a tin of peaches. For an hour, nobody shot. It didn't stop the war. But it reminded me that we were human before we were soldiers.
Do not let the hate take root in you, little one. That is the only territory that truly matters. Hold onto the light, no matter how small. It is the only thing that is real.
Amina reread the words until they blurred. A former soldier, perhaps even one of the occupiers, had seen her pain and offered this olive branch. She looked at the paper snowflakes taped to the damp walls. They weren't foolish. They were necessary. Hope wasn't pretending the bad didn't exist; it was acknowledging the bad and choosing to plant a seed of good right in the middle of it.
The Miracle
As night deepened and the curfew whistle blew, their basement became a sanctuary. Neighbours from the floors above, shivering due to blown-out windows, trickled down to join them. It was a ragtag assembly of the besieged.
The "feast" was meagre, a soup made from the apples and potatoes, bread hard as stone dipped in broth. The "tree" was a stepladder wrapped in green fabric and hung with Amina’s newspaper snowflakes. But the air was rich.
Old Mr Petrović told stories of Christmases before the Iron Curtain fell, making the children giggle. Sarah played her three-string guitar, and they sang "Silent Night," their voices weaving together, frail but defiant against the thud of distant artillery. Mama finally smiled, a genuine, weary softening of her eyes as she looked around the crowded, candlelit cellar. They were alive. They were together.
Then, the heavy iron door at the top of the basement stairs groaned.
The singing died in throats. Eyes widened in the candlelight. It was past curfew. Only patrols were out now.
Footsteps descended slowly, heavily. The inner door creaked open. A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, gaunt, bearded, smelling of diesel fumes and old sweat. He leaned heavily against the doorframe, as if the air in the room was too thick to walk through.
Mama made a sound that was half-sob, half-scream.
It was Papa. His left arm was in a crude sling, and his eyes were hollowed out by exhaustion, but he was there. He was whole. The room erupted not in cheers, but in a collective gasp of disbelief followed by a rush of weeping bodies pressing toward him. As Amina buried her face in his filthy coat, smelling the smoke and cold of the outside world, the ceramic nativity scene caught her eye. The fragile child didn't look foolish anymore. He looked unbreakable.
Conclusion
Later that night, curled against her father's side, listening to the ragged rhythm of his breathing, Amina reflected on the soldier’s letter. The war was not over. The world outside was still bleeding, from Krasno to Australia. Tomorrow would bring cold and hunger again.
But something had fundamentally shifted. Amina realised that the miracle wasn't just Papa coming home. The miracle was that they had gathered to sing in the dark before they knew he was coming. She understood now that hope was not merely a feeling that arrived like good weather; it was a discipline, a stubborn choice made every single day. In a world addicted to darkness, lighting a single candle was the most revolutionary act of all.