Christmas Party

Last evening, I was privileged to join my Sunday School class for our Christmas gathering, which happened at Martha's Orchard just west of Plainfield. It was most pleasant. The venue was nice. One of the evening's events was a scavenger hunt, of sorts, to discover things about our surroundings and ourselves. One directive was to share a "special Christmas" memory.

Every Christmas is special, of course...but I remembered one that has stuck with me all these years. Many Christmases were spent at my grandparents' farm in Illinois. It was a two-bedroom house, with a hide-away couch in the living room. To this day, I don't have a clue where we all slept when we visited--the five of us along with my two grandparents--but I didn't care. In those days, kids were expected to entertain themselves while the adults did their thing, and I was expected to sleep on the hide-away with a sibling. Their thing was to play bridge or pinochle around the circular card table in the middle of the living room while the rest of us were supposed to go to sleep mere feet from the festivities. Dad and my grandfather (Popo) smoked cigars, and they all were loud in their enjoyment of being together. I loved the festivity of it all!

The farmhouse had three picture windows--one in the dining room, facing west; and two in the living room, one facing east and the bigger one facing south. My grandmother always kept the curtains closed during the day, but at night, they were open. I never truly understood that, but it wasn't up to me. I didn't care!

One Christmas Eve--how old was I? 11? 12? Maybe not that old... We were at the farm. The card table was up. The adults were playing cards. I was so excited, I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to. I knew I should be asleep to make the night go faster, but it just wasn't going to happen. What DID happen around midnight was that a huge cloud of fog settled on the farmyard. I couldn't see past the light in the yard through the picture window. It was eerie. Then everything froze. When the fog lifted a bit later, everything--every blade of grass--was white with hoar frost. Christmas Eve magic! It was a crystalline world! God had wrought something to remind us of the miracle of the night. I have never forgotten it.