A holy, but not so silent, night.

This is one of those moments when words come close to failing.  To be perfectly candid about it, looking out our windows this afternoon at the torrents of rain gave us pause.  With the light up of the Festival's biggest night of the season hours away, we found ourselves up against the hard reality of a weather system that showed nothing remotely resembling a Christmas spirit.  How do you hold a bonfire party in a sub tropical, temperate rainforest monsoon?  There was nothing for it but to stick to the plan.  Our tents and sound equipment arrived on time, faithfully marshaled by the District of West Vancouver's unflappable Crystal Coté.  Our stalwart friends Sofia and Brad, Paul and Gwendolyn, Squamish elder Wendy Charbonneau and a host of others including the Tiddley Cove Morris Dancers, brought the heat of moral courage to us.  I realized all would be well when our torchman from the Parks department, with a can of gasoline at hand, set light to the twenty metre bonfire he had laid with pyrotechnical majesty on Friday.  It was a work of sculpture in beach logs, sparks and flame.  There was a deep Christmas magic at work, in the Morris dancers and the Hot Mammas, in the hundreds of people who came despite the tempest -- the people who said they would not miss this event for the world.  And this was enough, in the end, to make the rain stop.  It was this leap of faith at Christmas that did what the satellite imaging said was impossible: bring a dry hour or two to Dundarave Beach against a Pineapple Express.  We ended the bonfire night with (another) $25,000 raised to make sure the people who are homeless in our community have what they need to take pride of place in the centre of our community.  We ended the night, the longest night of the year, leaving no one in the cold.  There's deep Christmas magic in all of this, proof that there's a light in the world the darkness cannot overcome.