When I was a twelve year old boy I remember a Christmas at my grandparent’s farm. It was tradition for all of us to gather there. There was the adult table in the dining room, and the kids table in the kitchen. We had all come to gather around the tables for lunch, the two grandparents, their three children and their spouses, and seven grandchildren. This memory happened before all of that. I remember, before the goodbyes, before the sledding, before the gifts exchanged, before the lunch, before the common table prayer, I was on the porch.
I was looking over the snow covered lawn. My gaze had fallen past the garage and past the chicken coop. I had fixed my sight, through the crisp air, upon the the barn. It was there that I remember coming to rest as I chewed upon an apple that everything was right. The cows were huddled in the pasture. Their breath blowing smokey clouds from their nostrils as their sides held sheets of snow. The chickens were nestled in their beds of straw staying warm inside their coop. The cats in the barn doing whatever it is that cats do, and the dogs under the table waiting for the meal to begin. It was their in that moment, that at least in the mind of a twelve year old, there was peace. And it is in that moment that I remember Christmas. Peace like that, will be brought to the world, because of a Christmas long ago, that wasn’t in the winter.
And as I sit eighteen years later in my parents’ living room, strapped to their couch by my friend named Flu and his buddy Fever, I yearn for Christmases like that to never cease.
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