Her name sounds like holiday music -- Carol. When she smiles her eyes dance like visions of sugar plums in the misty Christmas dreams of children. But Carol's eyes don't often dance these days. In December she decorates the tree and strings the lights and hangs the mistletoe and holly. She wears festive holiday seaters, angel earrings and a bright red bow in her hair. Carol bakes Santa-shaped cookies for her children and hangs a handmade stocking for each over the fireplace.

Early in the month she orders a gift for her husband, something practical, but impersonal. "The perfect gift for that important business associate" is how the catalogue advertises it. Carol's marriage has grown as cold as the December wind that sweeps dead leaves across her well manicured lawn. She goes through the motions of Christmas, but Christmas doesn't move her any more.

Carol would trade the hardwood floors and the mahogany furniture in their comfortable home for one evening's worth of the way it once was. They had far less to spend, but more love to give.

Now she walks through the great room toward the cabinet where she keeps a secret. The artificial glow of the electric candles in the windows is the only light in the room. She finds the flask and pours a drink. The familiar aroma of the beverage mingles with the scent of holly hanging on the mantle. Everything around her expresses the joy of Christmas. Everything within her contradicts it. For some people Christmas magnifies more than the birth of Christ.

What story will we tell Carol this holiday season? Perhaps we will choose the gospel of Luke. Luke presents columns of caroling angels heralding joyful tidings to timid shepherds. Luke has sweet old people taking an eight-day-old Jesus into their arms and thanking God for letting them live long enough to see Israel's salvation. Wonderful angel choirs and doting surrogate grandparents make a moving Christmas pageant. But not everyone can identify with peace on earth and good will toward men and women.

His family name sounds like an overcast day -- Gray. Mr. Gray visits the cemetery more frequently than any church. He goes to tend the grave of his deceased wife. Her resting place is marked by a large, granite headstone. With dimming eyes he reads the words, "Margaret Elizabeth Gray." In a whispered voice he speaks the name. Rust colored dust from a nearby construction site has settled into the horizontal crevices of the letters that spell her name and the numbers that count her years.

From the pocket of his overcoat, Mr. Gray pulls a soft-bristled brush and sweeps the marker clean. Bending over stiffly, he centers an arrangement of poinsettias in the white gravel that drains away the rain water and keeps the weeds at bay.

A gust of wind blows the flowers over, and he winces as he reaches to catch them. Age, grief and the cold have slowed his reactions, and one of the stems is badly damaged. It hangs by a bare, green thread. He struggles to decide what to do about the broken flower; leave it alone and hope it will survive, or concede the inevitable; pull it from the arrangement and let it die. The decision about this flower is harder to make than it should be, he knows. He has been here before, trying to hold on to a dying flower, loving her too much to let her go.