That seemed worlds away from Amity, Oregon. Rain poured down constantly, and there was not a snowflake in sight. None of our decorations were on the tree—those were packed away somewhere in a box with the rest of our stuff. Mrs. Allen’s tree was beautiful, but I missed the special ornaments I looked forward to every year.
I imagined all of my relatives celebrating without me while I sat here, in another place. It was a nice place, just not the place for Christmas.
I picked up my Bible, long-neglected since I’d found out about the move. As I thumbed through it, I thought I might as well read “The Christmas Story.” Even though I’d heard the Bible story of Christ’s birth many times before, a new understanding dawned on me. Mary and Joseph were homeless, far from home, away from the comfort of family and friends. The smelly, dirty manger was no place to celebrate the birth of any child, let alone the Christ child—and yet it turned into one of the most memorable celebrations ever—announced by a whole host of angels and attended by shepherds and even a few Kings from the Orient. The very first Christmas was celebrated far away from home, family, and comfort.
Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone anymore. I shared something in common with Mary. Besides, I did still have my immediate family and even some friends with me. I washed my face and appeared in the kitchen. Soon I was caught up in a rousing game of Yahtzee—not exactly a teen’s dream activity, but it was better than feeling sorry for myself.
Later that afternoon, preparations for the next day were well underway. “Mrs. Allen, can I help you bake the pies?” I asked.
“Sure, we’ve got lots of them to make.” She set out the big pie plates and several individual pies. I helped roll out pie crusts and peeled apples. Soon the house smelled of cinnamon, cloves, and apples baking. We even found a lot to laugh about as we pitched in to help each other make preparations for the day ahead. When everything was ready, we pulled out the Yahtzee game again and played long into the night.
The next morning, as we gathered I looked around the dim living room, lit with only the lights from the tree. The tired but eager faces of the Allen children shone with expectation, awaiting their turns to open gifts. It wasn’t the place I’d envisioned celebrating Christmas, but then again, a manger wasn’t the place Mary and Joseph envisioned welcoming Jesus into the world either. I discovered that Christmas isn’t about a place or traditions; the place where Christmas lives is simply in our hearts.
~Lynetta L. Smith
Na’aseh V’Nishma
I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become... but there are always saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.
~May Sarton
Dark clouds churned low over the freeway, dropping torrents of rain. My wipers ticked steadily, but uselessly, just like my harried mind.
December 1st, I thought. How will I get it all done? The ninth-grade essays, the paper for my degree, Sean’s basketball game and Cristin’s history paper. Not to mention the vet, the refrigerator repairman, Mark’s office party... and Christmas.
Christmas. The last thing I needed was that empty set of chores—not that I did much anymore. Every year I dropped something else. Gone were lights on the house and the banister greens. The crèche remained in storage; if only we could skip the tree. And Christmas Eve Mass: standing for two hours in an overcrowded church, listening to children sing off-key; wishing peace to total strangers on cue, greeting a wooden Holy Family. Pointless—at least to me.
I exited the freeway. The rain was letting up a bit, but the wind was wild; fir branches skated over the street. With luck, I’d reach my classroom before my students.
My students. Talk about pointless chores! As Orthodox Jews, their lives were crammed with them. Every morning they prayed and studied the Old Testament—Torah to them—for four hours before the standard high school curriculum began. They had nine classes per day, raced from classroom to classroom, every boy with a yarmulke on his head, every girl in a long skirt, each time kissing their fingers and tapping the mezuzah, a cylinder encasing a tiny prayer scroll affixed to every doorframe in the school. Kiss-tap. Kiss-tap. Kiss-tap. All day long. And Jewish holidays! There were so many: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukah, each requiring toilsome preparations, all between Labor Day and Christmas! How did they manage—and why?
Truth was, I envied them. How wonderful to believe so deeply in God that all those acts seemed meaningful, worth the time. When I was a teenager, I too had believed in God. I prayed every night on my knees, celebrated the holidays in awe. No more. Earthquakes, bombings, poverty, disease. I simply couldn’t understand God—but my students obviously could. It never seemed to occur to them that their acts of faith were futile, a waste of time. Like Christmas.
I pulled into the school parking lot. Oh well, I thought. They’re chosen. I’m not.
“Okay,” I said to my freshmen later that day, “please open to chapter five. At this point in the memoir, Eliezer is in the concentration camp and has just witnessed the hanging of an innocent Jewish boy, only slightly younger than he is. How did the hanging affect him?” A hand darted up. “Amira?”
“He stopped believing in God.”
“That’s right,” added Nitza, “because later in the chapter Eliezer refused to pray on Yom Kippur. He’d always prayed before.”
“And how did he feel about that?” I asked.
“Oh, he says right here,” called Riva, pointing at a page: “I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God.... I stood amid that praying congregation, observing it like a stranger.” Riva looked up, her blue eyes piercing me: “Eliezer felt empty, cut off from God.”
“He should have prayed anyway,” suggested Avraham.
That confused me: “If he didn’t believe in God,” I said, “wouldn’t praying have been hypocritical?”
“No,” replied Suri. “The Torah tells you to follow God’s rituals even when they make no sense. It’s called Na’aseh V’Nishma—We will act and we will understand. First you do the acts, then you’ll understand God. If Eliezer had observed the holiday, he might have recovered some faith.”
I stared at her... and wondered: “Just like that?”
“Well, you also have to read the Torah to understand the symbolism of the acts, and think about it.”
I pondered Suri’s words on the drive home from school: Na’aseh V’Nishma.—First do the acts, then you’ll understand God. Had I had everything backwards? I’d assumed that faith came first and brought meaning to the acts—but maybe meaningful acts came first and brought faith. I glanced through the windshield at the fir trees at the roadside, their branches now at rest, and an emerging ray of sunlight made me squint.
That evening I pulled out the battered cardboard crate marked “Xmas.” I opened it, plunged my hand in among the wires and rummaged through the multicolored lights. I untangled a string of tiny white lights, then marched into the family room, ignoring the books and papers stacked beside my chair. Slowly, methodically, I strung the lights on the ficus tree that always stood in the corner of the room—my first Christmas act. Then I plugged in the cord, and the lights winked at me.
I searched through the adjacent bookshelves. There it was: The Family Bible—abridged, annotated and illustrated—perfect for a novice like me. I pulled the Bible out and ran my finger along its edge, dislodging a layer of dust. The spine creaked as I opened it, and for the first time in my life, I sat down to read the Old Testament: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth....”
December days slipped by. Somehow, I completed my tasks, decorated a Christmas tree, set out the crèche, and came to know Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon and Esther. They were nothing like I’d expected—not pious or perfect saints. Instead, they were flawed and floundered in their faith—just like me, yet chosen.
On Christmas Eve, I sat down in my chair to read God’s final promise to the Jewish people: “See I will send my messenger, who will prepar
e the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple: the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire will come.”
And he did come—that night at Christmas Eve Mass. As the children sang like angels and the people prayed for peace, the Holy Family entered the cathedral. Living and breathing—at least to me.
My family was silent as we drove home from church. The streets were vacant, still. I gazed through the window at the dark cloudless night, the countless winking stars. Na’aseh V’Nishma. I had acted and understood.
~Jan Vallone
A Sign Unto You
The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.
~Author Unknown
A honk of the mailman’s horn meant something special. Most days Mr. Robert barely slowed as he eased the mail into our box and disappeared around the bend. My sisters and I were fascinated to watch the old man maneuvering his weathered hatchback from the passenger seat—left arm clamped to the wheel, the right deftly stuffing envelopes and small packages into our box, his eyes never leaving the road.
But a toot of his horn signaled something else entirely. It meant a package too big to fit in the box. Since my two brothers left for Vietnam, the packages had been exciting. One brother sent stuffed animals with transistor radios in their bellies. Mine was a purple poodle which I took everywhere with me. The other brother sent eighteen inch-dolls dressed in traditional Vietnamese attire which Mama declared “for the shelf, not the toy box.”
At the sound of the horn, my sister, Michelle, and I scrambled off the front porch and raced each other to the highway. No matter how fast we were, the old man would be incensed at how long we’d taken. Sure enough, by the time I made it to his car, he was handing Michelle a box—that looked like it had been through a battle or two itself—and was off in a huff. I wasn’t old enough to read all the writing but recognized the foreign looking stamps and knew that either Duff or Wayne had sent something mysterious from the other side of the world. With Christmas only months away, my mind reeled with possibilities.
Instead of making Mama happy the way I always expected them to, a package from one of her boys made her quieter than usual. She’d never let us see her cry or even look blue but the same boxes that elated my six sisters and me had the opposite effect on Mama. She read the letter to herself then, with a quiet smile, invited us to, “Go ahead. Open the box.” She didn’t have to ask twice.
The first thing we saw was strange looking newsprint. We fished around in it and pulled out figures of animals—sheep, a donkey, a large brown cow, a camel—and people—kings, shepherds, Mary, Joseph, an angel and the baby Jesus. It was the Holy Family. There was also a primitive barn complete with straw attached to the floor and roof—like the one on the lawn at church, only smaller.
And so began one of my favorite Christmas traditions—one my sisters and I continue with our own kids and grandkids to this day. That night Mama meted out the nativity figures and nestled the empty barn under the Christmas tree. Daddy—a born performer—read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible, making it come alive for us.
We girls sat, feet tucked beneath us, nativity figures in our laps. As the story unfolded, we took turns placing each figure in its proper place—first the animals, then Mary and Joseph, the infant King, the angel, shepherds and eventually the wise men who traveled from afar (or in our case, from the coffee table).
After the story was complete, Daddy produced a tape recorder and we took turns recording messages to our brothers which Mama would mail the next morning.
A year later, Duff and Wayne were back with us—they and their young wives and babies—as we reenacted the story again.
Over the years, we shared that tradition with cousins, neighbors and one grandchild after another. As each of us learned to read, Daddy invited us into his lap to take turns reading with him.
I’m not sure how I ended up with the old nativity set. The years (over forty) have taken their toll. The figures are chipped, glued and faded—pretty shabby looking, really. The cow is minus one horn and one sheep disappeared all together. The newspaper with the foreign writing disintegrated decades ago.
Every Christmas Eve though, the kids and I pull out those battered figures and that well-worn stable. Their daddy reads the story to us and the Holy Family makes their annual march to the nativity one more time.
~Mimi Greenwood Knight
The Griswold House
I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
~Harlan Miller
Every Christmas season for the past fifteen years, my elderly neighbor Mr. Jones (around the corner and down the street) begins putting up elaborate Christmas decorations approximately three weeks before Thanksgiving. A moderate myself, I’d always thought the amount of time and labor this extensive project took was absurd. And to begin exhibiting all this “holiday cheer” so early, well, that seemed even more absurd.
I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to haul out: thousands of strands of colored lights; puffy garlanded wreaths and decorated trees for every window; an illuminated choir of carolers lined up along the driveway, actually singing a full, robust repertoire of musical seasonal favorites; a life-sized Nativity scene in the center of the yard which included several plastic animals, a heralding angel hovering beside a huge star of Bethlehem with the three wise men hunkered worshipfully near the Holy Family; and a Santa’s Workshop stretched along one side of the house, complete with a motorized assembly line featuring myriad miniature elves working their cheery little hearts out to produce an immense pile of glowing packages at the end of the conveyor belt. All this seemed like major overkill to me, especially for a man obviously past his prime. And I couldn’t help but groan when I thought of poor old Mr. Jones having to haul all this junk down again eventually and find a place to store it until this time next year.
Scrooge-like, I always chuckled as I passed by the elaborate array each morning on my power walk; I’d labeled the Jones’ place “The Griswold House” after the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. “Want to find my house?” I’d say to my own holiday guests. “Turn left at The Griswold House. You can’t miss it.”
Yet, as festive as The Griswold House was, this year I harbored lonely, desperate feelings as I walked by each morning. The magic that came alive at night seemed depressingly drab and lifeless during daylight hours. “Just an illusion, make believe,” I’d huff to myself sadly, thinking about the horrendous year I’d just spent struggling to remain a source of optimism and support to three close family members who’d been diagnosed, one right after the other, with various forms of cancer. Sometimes, on the dark days when the ravaging effects of chemotherapy took their toll and the awful doubts crept over me that my loved ones might not survive, my heart and mind would seem just as bleak and cheerless as The Griswold House did in the daytime.
One evening while driving home a couple of weeks before Christmas, I was in a gloomy frame of mind. My daughter-in-law Amy had had a particularly difficult day battling her disease, and I’d spent the long hours of her misery simply being there for her, feeling impotent and desperate that I couldn’t make her pain go away. Multiply Amy’s misery by three, and what did anything about Christmas matter when my mother, niece, and daughter-in-law were suffering so? Today, Amy’s battle in particular seemed hopeless. Weary and depressed, I eased my car along the snowy streets, making my way toward home.
“Turn left at The Griswold House,” I mumbled to myself distractedly, the left turn still several blocks away. But then, something wondrous happened. The dazzling lights and bustle that is the magical soul of Christmas fairly burst from Mr. Jones’ property, lighting up the neighborhood in an explosion of splendor that robbed me of my breath. The gray tiredness that cloaked the Jones’ property by day had completely disappeared. In its place stood the merry little elves fashioning their marvelous toys.
Illuminated Christmas trees and wreaths stood in splendiferous array behind each bay window. What seemed like mile upon mile of tiny colorful lights flooded the roof and roared in joyous rivulets down the sides of the house. Hearing music, I slowed the car and rolled down my window. The line of carolers was performing “Silent Night,” my all-time favorite Christmas carol.
My eyes fell upon the Holy Family as flakes of snow fell quietly, reverently, upon the straw-strewn crèche. My heart all of a sudden filled with such awe and reverence I could barely contain my emotion. Here before my broken heart, arrayed like a glowing crowd of answered prayers, stood the true meaning of Christmas:
“And lo, the angel of the Lord... said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.’”
And Jesus said, “... The spirit of the Lord God... has anointed me to preach good tidings... he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives... to comfort all that mourn... to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness....”
I do not chuckle as I walk by The Griswold House anymore. Nor do I poke fun at Mr. Jones’ yearly labors of love as he so diligently works to ready his home for the holiday season. Mr. Jones is my hero. “I do it for the kids,” he told me lamely once, looking baffled that I should not readily understand his motivation.
Well, Mr. Jones, I understand now. It isn’t just for the children that you labor so hard every year. You do it because you want to proclaim to hurting people like me everywhere the astonishing meaning of Jesus’ birth. You do it because you understand that even in our darkest of nights, the star of Bethlehem shines bright, pointing the way to hope and healing and promise. You do it for people just like me who need to be reminded that we can all strive just a little harder to become the magic that transforms another’s sorrow into joy.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Magic Page 8
