I walk a lot late at night.

Sometimes it’s because my thoughts are racing, sometimes I can’t sleep. But every now and then I get an urge in my bones to go walking.

Last winter I was in a bad mental space, and I would often take long walks in the evenings to exhaust myself so I could fall asleep when I got back to my dorm. One night just before school let out for Christmas break, I set out again to face the night, bundled up in a huge coat I bought at Goodwill that looked like it was made from the hides of several skinned muppets.

It was bitterly cold. I couldn’t see the stars; it was supposed to snow soon, so the sky was heavy and yellowish like a bruise. There weren’t many people around. I had no destination in mind. I passed in and out of the pools of light below the streetlamps, searching for something I couldn’t name.

I slowed when I saw a church—its huge glass window faced out onto the sidewalk so that if you stood at the pulpit you could see straight out onto the street, past the last row of pews. But I was looking the other way, into the church, where a group of people were gathered at the far end. I’d passed the church before in the daytime, but I’d never walked far enough at night to encounter it, and, like a beacon, it drew me in. Imagine an alien tractor beam. I felt my legs moving me closer and was powerless to stop them. I squinted to get a better look at what was happening with the twelve or so people standing in a row. Then I saw their mouths begin to move, and I heard the singing.

It was so faint I couldn’t make it out; I didn’t recognize the tune. They must’ve been practicing for the Christmas service. I entered quietly through the side door of the building and found myself in the foyer between the outside and the main room. There was another door in front of me that led right to them, right to the singing, and I could’ve absorbed the beauty of their voices in the large, vaulted room, sitting discreetly in the back pew. I pictured myself there, just past that door, but at the same time, I knew I couldn’t do it. It would be weird, right? A stranger coming in off the street to sit in on choir practice? I could hear them start a new song, one so perfectly harmonized it sounded like it was made of light itself. I’d never heard it before. I’m not familiar with carols or Christmas or even churches; I’d only been inside a church once before, and that was just for a wedding. The only line I could make out was “amid the cold of winter,” which seemed appropriate. There was no piano, only voices, so flowing and gentle it sounded like something out of a dream. I felt an overwhelming urge to cry. I wanted so badly to go inside.

I didn’t go in. I don’t know quite why. But Sufjan’s simple version of the carol they had sung that night—the song I would later learn, while listening to Songs for Christmas Vol. V, was called “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming”—makes me imagine a world where I did go in. Where I sat in the back pew and closed my eyes and let the music wash over me.

After a few minutes, I walked back out into the night. The warm light of the church window faded behind me as I trekked further, past rows and rows of dimly lit storefronts, faintly glowing signs, stoplights, the occasional set of headlights glancing by. Everything felt unreal. Snow began to fall from the dark sky like dust from heaven, muffling everything. I eventually found myself back in my room, although I don’t remember the walk back. I must have moved through the quiet and the snow like a sleepwalker.

Whenever I hear the lilting piano on “Lo! How A Rose E’er Blooming,” I think of that night. I should have gone inside. Sometimes I worry that I’ve spent much of my life in dark thresholds like that one, peeking into big lighted rooms overflowing with music, knowing I don’t belong inside. This, to me, is what Christmas feels like. I can see the living room with the fireplace and the dog curled up next to it, with the kids unwrapping presents and dad in his easy chair and mom smiling cross-legged on the couch, and the light and the warmth of that scene glows out into the dark, quiet night, but for some reason I just can’t seem to get myself out of the cold.