Children take in everything. It is a joy to watch. (photo by Chris Erskine)

Christmas is coming. Can you hear the sirens, the screams?

I hear Christmas the way that Rilke heard angels.

As you may know, Rainer Maria Rilke was a writer known for his lusty love life (couldn’t keep his knickers up). Yet he also found beauty in the most ordinary things.

Thanks to him, I see beauty in a beer can. I see beauty in a pile of See’s Candy wrappers …the browns, the golds, the traces of chocolate.

Obviously, booming frontier towns such as Los Angeles are good places to celebrate the holidays, to see the beauty in simple things. I mean, that’s all we’ve got out here, really.

Just the other day, I spotted gardeners blowing the leaves off an autumn tree, blasting the jewels off the branches so they could rake the leaves up now instead of next week.

I thought to myself: “Bravo, men! That’s the kind of visionary thinking that sets Los Angeles apart.”

Like many guys, sometimes I’m consistent and sometimes I’m not.

But I have a consistent crush on Christmas – the magical realism, all its gooey habits and traditions.

– Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…

– Yuletide carols being sung by a choir…

– Why is this carpet all wet, Todd?

I like the beauty in the smallest things … a kind gesture, a courtesy, a nod.

I like the shiny holiday vibe, the old movies, jostling at the bar and bumping shoulders with total idiots.

“Sorry, bud. Here, this one’s on me.”

I like the way the holidays build. As with a great opera, there is a sense of anticipation, then total mayhem, then almost certain death.

In the end, everybody sings. Go figure.

When you feel bummed by the holidays – and that can easily happen – simply watch the young kids a while. Watch them take everything in, drive their parents crazy, fly around restaurants like monkeys on mopeds.

Their joy is simply too much to contain. Really, many of them should probably be incarcerated.

Yet, the way Rilke heard the angels, I hear the joyous screams of children.

One of them in particular, my granddaughter. I see sonnets in her eyes, limericks on her nose and lips.

At 3, she believes in all this holiday’s Norse myths, its crazy fables, its giant unattainable promises.

She believes fat men squeeze down sealed-off apartment chimneys … that reindeer can dunk a basketball.

She believes in justice: If you are good, you are rewarded. If you’re bad, you get coal.

Well, we know that life isn’t quite so just as that. Sometimes, the good get punished. Sometimes, the bad flourish in spectacular and unforeseeable ways.

But for a moment, put yourself in this toddler’s Velcro shoes. Suspend belief. Embrace the impossible.

For a moment, think that little red dot screaming across the night sky might be a sleigh.

As the eggheads say, the absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Imagine, for instance, that Santa slips through drapes of Einstein’s space-time continuum, fusing the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, thereby allowing the old coot to visit a billion homes in a single night.

You don’t know.

And think that — for all its bloat, for all its bluster — an American Christmas still mostly delivers.

Not luxury sedans necessarily – never saw anybody actually receive a Mercedes for Christmas. To this day, I think those crass commercials are just Germany’s way of turning wives against husbands, of punishing the United States for being the superior nation.

I mean, what a ridiculous campaign: A $100,000 car for Christmas, the so-called “December to Remember.”

Well, I got your December to Remember right here, pal.

I’ve got a new book so good I want to marry it.

I’ve got a single-barrel bourbon that will clear all your clots.

I’ve got a playlist so perfect it’ll make you believe in God and Kelly Clarkson.

I’ve got a noisy family of cooks, cranks and wise guys racing out at the last minute for vanilla extract to make the cookies, or fresh sage to sprinkle on the roast beast.

Am I rich? So rich. Am I delusional? Well, obviously.

As Dickens and Seuss reminded us: Christmas is friends and family and all the right stuff.

Christmas is the kids down in Whoville joining hands in a circle even though the Grinch rolled through overnight and swiped all their strumpets and Xboxes.

And everybody sings.

Can you hear it?

I see beauty everywhere, even in a homemade TP snowman. (photos by Chris Erskine)

Chris Erskine was an editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times for 30 years. His columns now run weekly here. He also posts on Wednesdays: ChrisErskineLA.com.