Christine Wilcox is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Essay/Memoir Contest

She slips into Mass during the processional, as if she’s part of it. But she’s on the left aisle, not the center, where the incense trails the short, skinny acolyte like a contrail, briefly enshrouding Father Johnny Johnson. For a moment he looks like something. She keeps pace with the thurifer, then sidesteps right into a pew about seven back.

The first thing you notice about her is the Santa hat. Campy red velour, with the white trim, and the snowball tassel, too. But, to be honest, what you really notice first, is that the shaft of the hat is wrapped in round, primary-color Christmas lights, which are on and cycling through a sequence of flare, strobe, pulse.

Flare, strobe, pulse go the lights. It is the second Sunday of Advent, so wearing it is not exactly an anachronism, but no matter the season it is still pretty unorthodox to have it turned on.

You’d think it was the sort of stunt to be pulled by a homeless street person coming into catch some warm air and the Gospel, in that order, but she’s otherwise tidy and well-dressed. Sixty-something, maybe. So hard to tell. The kind of age you can’t pin down in good posture. A curly band of grey hair peeks out below the white brim of the hat. If you weren’t looking at her the way I was, you’d mistake it for the fur.

She looks straight ahead. I gaze above her head at a Station of the Cross, then up at the altar, then sort of side-eye her as the Kyrie begins. She slides into verse, belting out the two occasions of “Mercy”. Flare, strobe, pulse. “Lawd have MERCY”. Then it dawned on me. Some people pray with words. Some people pray with nuisance.

Between us is about fourteen rows and the entire left side of the center aisle pews. Nobody really looks at her, or each other for that matter. The first would be judgmental and the second conspiratorial, neither a good look in Mass. I continue to stare at “Veronica Wipes the Tears” because doing so I can see peripherally the wash of cheap, festive colors—flare, strobe, pulse. I wonder to myself if she even knows they’re switched on.

I stifle a laugh. Then, unable to suppress it, I pretend to cough and cover my whole face with my hand. I couldn’t tell if I was laughing with her or at the room for pretending not to see her. My wife elbows me. I feel like I’m in church with my ten-year-old twin brother after one of us farts. Our chests pulsating with trapped laughter until Dad separated us by pinching the shit out of our triceps and pulling us briskly to separate sides of him. Flare, strobe, pulse.

Later, right before the Agnus Dei, we do the ritualistic sign of peace. We used to shake hands. We’d wait until the folks right in front of us turned to the back, then we’d turn back behind us and shake some more hands, then get to each other with hugs and kisses. Now we just flash the “V” sign to everyone and mouth peace be with you, like
we’re in a theater at intermission. It has always struck me that at church you should be making signs of peace the whole time, not just for twenty seconds in seventy-five minutes. Anyway, nobody looks at her. Nobody.

So I do. Flare, strobe, pulse. She stares right at me. Raises the “V” all the way over her head and wiggles it a little bit. I smile and grit my teeth really hard to keep from laughing. I wonder what she thinks of me. She looks around again, catches nobody’s eye, then back at me. She points to the hat and there goes the laugh. I let it fly. One of those Muttley rasping, shoulder-shaking ones.

She turns back to the front. I lean back in my pew and stare straight ahead. Then comes the refrain from fourteen rows up and an aisle to the left: “Have MERCY on us”. flare, strobe, pulse. I wish time would just stop for a while. Maybe she’d look over again. But we all kneel. And time passes anyway.

J.M.C. Kane is the author of the non-fiction book Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk UK). He is an ASD-1 and writes from this learned experience. His prose work has been published in more than three dozen literary journals & magazines, including Plough, Camas, AMERICA Magazine, Commonweal, Smokelong Quarterly, and The New Ohio Review, where he won the 2025 Ellis Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives in New Orleans with his family where he works as an environmental attorney.