Once it held laughter.

Once it held dreams.

Did they throw it away?

Did they know what it means?

— Tom Waits, “The House Where Nobody Lives”

It’s a season of light and celebration, but Christmas this year is tempered by the knowledge that this is not the same country it was a year ago.

We’ve spent the past 12 months watching the rising tide of misery on the pages of this newspaper, writ in tiny type and legalize.

On a single day last summer the Sun Journal ran 15 foreclosure notices. This wave of hardship started last fall, peaked this past summer and now finally seems to be ebbing.
We have run hundreds of those notices, knowing that behind each one is a separate tale of pain, fear and humiliation.

It might be the story of a job lost or of overwhelming medical bills. Perhaps it has more to do with rising interest rates or a divorce. Maybe of alcohol abuse or drug addiction. Or, perhaps, of a business bankruptcy or simple miscalculation.

Left behind are hundreds of thousands of houses that once held dreams and laughter and which are now cold and dark, and in practically every neighborhood in this land.

Sadly, we realize that Maine and New England have not been the hardest hit. In Michigan and Ohio, in California, Nevada and Florida, the foreclosure rates have been two or three times higher.

And what of the families? At first we thought local homeless shelters would be full. Not so. Two local shelters report that they have not seen an increase over last year.

The victims of the foreclosure crisis have, according to one shelter director, joined the ranks of the invisible poor. They have moved in with relatives or friends, or they have gone from home ownership to an apartment.

In each case, however, there has been a sad goodbye and a painful disruption. Hundreds of thousands of families who thought of themselves as secure or middle class now find themselves living with insecurity and bleaker expectations for the future.

For many, it will be a season without gifts for the children and without the former comfort and security of a home.

What are they to make of a season of joy?

We hope they can take some comfort in the realization that a house is, essentially, just a building designed to contain the love and unity of the people who dwell there. And that even an occupied home with a fully paid mortgage can, without love, be a cold stack of timbers and bricks.

The essential fact of the Christmas story is that God did not first share his only son with a king or a wealthy family, but with a homeless couple, lodged for a night in the most humble of shelters.

What makes a house grand

Ain’t the roof or the door.

If there’s love in a house

It’s a palace for sure.

— Tom Waits

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