December 6, 2012

• Mary and Joseph…

  It was a cold Iowa Sunday morning- the kind where the backseat of the station wagon never got warm enough to take off your mittens and you saw your breath in the air all the way to church. My dad was supply preaching on that icy day (which means he was filling in for a church in the middle of searching for a new pastor) so they dressed us in our best hand-me-down Sunday clothes and jammed the four of us in the backseat. The roads were slick and snow covered and a new dusting was falling. It was the Sunday before Christmas and my older brother and mom were singing a special so they practiced all the way to church.

  We had gotten our tree the day before. My father drove out to the middle of nowhere and cut down the biggest tree he could find. When he and my brother went to put it on top of the station wagon, it hung over on both sides. They trimmed it down a couple of times before realizing no one had brought the rope so my father flipped open the back of the car and shoved the tree in, bottom first, hoping there’d be room for us when he was done. With the star end of the tree bouncing up and down with every bump on the country roads, my father headed home, tailgate held open wide with the tree branches. It was cold in the car and you couldn’t huddle together because there was a giant tree separating us. When we got it home, in the stand, my father set it up in the room with twelve foot ceilings and the tree hit the ceiling and curved back down towards the ground.

  Sick of the tree, worried slightly that a squirrel would jump out of it once it warmed up, I went to complain to my mother. She didn’t want to hear it and set me to work making paper chains for it. Can you even begin to guess how many paper chains you have to make for a tree taller than twelve feet tall?

  My father and brother dragged it back out of the house but my father didn’t want to cut off one inch too many. “A tall tree,” he kept saying. “I want the biggest, tallest tree that will fit in the house.” By the next morning, the tree stood straight up and brushed the ceiling. But there were no lights or decorations for it.

  I don’t remember much about church that day. I recall the room being dark and moody, like the sky and my heart. I know my father preached and my mother played the piano and my brother sang a carol. I know someone told me the story of the first Christmas with a coloring sheet. But on the ride home, my father told my mother that the church didn’t pay him. The man who was supposed to was sick and no one else could do it. My parents had to be counting on that money. My father was working a series of low-paying jobs while my mother wrote and raised us in the drafty farm house they rented.

  “You don’t have to give me the tea set,” I chimed in from the backseat.

  “Who said you were getting a tea set?” my mother asked, before beginning the weekly discussion. “What was the most important part of your Sunday School class?”

  “The candy cane,” butted in Songbird. She was barely three that year.

  The snow started coming down harder making the mounds of snow along the road a brilliant white.

  “What if Jesus came today?” I wondered.

  “He’d freeze to death,” my oldest brother decided.

  “We would let Mary and Joseph in, wouldn’t we?” My mother challenged.

  Up ahead, miles from town, a car sat in snowbank, the engine not running. In that kind of weather, in the countryside of Iowa, there is only response. You stop and check on the family in the other car. My father pulled over, got out, and went over to talk to a man with straggly brown beard. He looked a lot like the man I’d colored that very morning.

  When the woman stepped out of the car, so pregnant that she lumbered when she walked, she needed both men at her elbows to keep her stable on the icy road.

  “It’s Mary,” Songbird said, the sound of wonder in her voice. It was Mary, I agreed.

  They came home with us and stayed a couple of days with us while their car got fixed. Christmas was right around the corner and my mother kicked into high Holiday gear. She made a thousand star cookies decorated with yellow frosting and tiny white balls with holes in them and hung them on the tree. Every day when I got home the kitchen was full of stacks of cookies, homemade candy and fudge, while my mother and the pregnant woman laughed together. I checked to see if Baby Jesus came before I changed in play clothes, but was never surprised. Everyone knew he didn’t come until Christmas Day.

  One of my mother’s checks for an article arrived and we went to the bank to cash it. The cashier gave me a big candy cane and her eyes got big when I told her Mary and Joseph were staying at our house. My mother tried to explain, but the people at the bank gave me another candy cane for Songbird.

  Christmas Eve Day came and Joseph’s car waited in the driveway. My mother stuffed it full of baby clothes our own baby had grown and boxes and boxes of cookies and treats for the ride. She begged them to stay until after Christmas, until after the next snowstorm, but they were eager to start their journey. As they left, my mother slipped a stack of cash in Mary’s pocket. Mary caught her and tried to give it back. “For the baby,” my mom said. Mary gave us all a big hug and promised to write after they got where they were going.

  We set up the creche under the manger after they were gone: Mary, Joseph, and the animals. The shepherds were off to the side with their sheep and the angels wouldn’t appear until after supper. Baby Jesus was left in the box with the Wise men that wouldn’t appear for another week or so. That night, my father read the part of the Christmas story where Joseph and Mary went off on their grand adventure and I worried about our Mary and Joseph. Would their car stay fixed? Would they find a place to sleep that night? Would there be a bed for the baby when he was born?

  There wasn’t a tea set under the tree that year. There weren’t very many gifts at all. My mother made us all new pajamas, a set of matching mittens and hats, but we all knew my mother had given all her Christmas money to Mary. It felt like a special gift to be able to take care of Baby Jesus like one of the Wise men, and my father reminded us that the greatest gift we can give someone is to show them love in action- a love that takes in strangers and feeds them. He reminded us that when we take care of those in need we are taking care of Jesus.

  A few weeks later, a card came in the mail telling us that the baby was born, safe and sound.

  For years, we talked about the year that Joseph and Mary came to visit us.

  As I set out the manger sets this season, I am reminded that it’s not the material gifts we give that count- it’s the acts of love that make Christmas Christmas. May this season be full of opportunities to take care of Baby Jesus for you. May you see him in the poor, the hungry, the innocent ones needing a little bit of love. May you see him in forgiveness and patience. May you see him in your home and your heart this year… and if you’re lucky… may you see your own Mary and Joseph and have the ability to help take care of them!

  • 3:37 pm
  • 17 Comments