Christmas 2010

It's a different Christmas this year. I guess it all started 17 years ago. My husband and I were living in this apartment in Lawton, Oklahoma. We bought a real tree, and for months we vacuumed needles, upon moving out, we still were picking up needles, hoping to remove a possible fine for not cleaning well enough. Our second year of marriage we found the perfect artificial tree, breaking our budget we bought it. It looked great, year after year, and looked real. Every year we seemed to get wiser about how to put it up, wrapping it in saran wrap color coded, it was a real effort and took a long time to get it looking the way we liked. Last year, it seemed our reason for purchasing this tree had come to an end. Our tree after 16 years of being put up and taken down, branches spread by a family of 6....was shedding it's needles. Once again our reason for not buying a real tree was happening by our fake tree. This being the second year of debate, the tree was put on free cycle. Our plan was to hit the after Christmas tree sales. I would see a tree but being 8 months pregnant, didn't want to deal with the box. Our family of now 7 has yet to put up a Christmas tree, maybe 2010 we will. This year we had no tree to put up. So here it is December 23rd, and we have not decorated. We'll head off to Grandma and Pop pop's house and most likely decorate their tree. In years past we have gone out to the field and cut down a tree. I will never forget the year, my Dad wanting to save the life of a tree, bought a tree for $5 at Lowes, we hauled the tree out into the field, then later returned with all the grands and had them "cut down" the tree.....only the oldest knew it was a fraud...but Pop made her pose for a photo anyway. Christmas morning the children gather and remember the true meaning of Christmas. They sing Happy Birthday Jesus as they walk down in birth order....guess Nate will change things this year, all too soon he'll be walking down those stairs. Then they gather in the living room for Pop to read them the Christmas story, usually he tears up with emotion at this point. From there we will gather in the large room and open gift. Yes every year my husband and I give three gifts to each child remember the gifts of the Wise Men.....Gold, frankincense and myrrh....at least we hope they remember the Wise Men who searched for 2 years to find the Christ Child. Long ago I remember hearing this story by Paul Harvey....(I love hearing him on the radio and have sat many a time waiting for "the rest of the story." Big size The Man and the Birds by Paul Harvey The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service. Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound...Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud...At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them...He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms...Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me...That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm...to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand." At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.