Volume 1 Issue 5
Volume 1 Issue 5
’Twas the night before Christmas
’Twas the night before Christmas, we were all in the house
It was Christmas eve. I must’a been four or five years old. My older brother Dave would’a been five or six. It was dark outside. We were inside and warm. Burning corn cobs, Dad had the stovepipe red hot. Cobs burn hot but fast; a good way to heat the house quick, then stoke the fire with wood or coal for the night. The pump house was loaded with both: coal from the Vigo-County mines and hot-burning hedge from the hedgerows.
Dave and I stayed by the stove and waited for the sound of a handheld brass school bell. The sound came last year on Christmas Eve. That was now a coon’s age off in the ancient past to our little-boy minds. But we remembered and hoped. Then the sound. The bell. A man’s laughter, Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! It got louder as it got closer.
Dave and I ran to the window, pushed back the sash, and looked. It was Sandy Claws his own self. There he was, big as life, walkin’ across the lot in front of the twin chicken houses, openin’ the chicken-fence gate, then walking toward our side porch as he swung his arm up and down, ringing the brass school bell and bellowing Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!
Sandy Claws’s white beard hung down and his belly made his belt buckle stand out. He stepped up onto the porch. Dad opened the door and let him in. Sandy Claws handed Dave and me each a gift. They were alike. A little pig that walked down any flat surface we put it on and titled a little. I still got that pig and he still walks downhill.
Sandy Claws was Bruce and Hazel Gard’s brother, Rex. Bruce and Rex were a couple of well-known WWI veterans ’round home. Dad farmed both Bruce’s ground and his sister Hazel’s. To Dave and I, they were Uncle Bruce, Uncle Rex, and Aunt Hazel. Though all three were not uncles and aunt a’tall, but were shirt-tail cousins to us.
The Bible tells us to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Thus, Christian folk have always observed the Lord’s Supper (Passover Supper) to remind us of His death and burial and Easter to remind us of His burial and resurrection from the dead.
The Bible, however, does not tell us to observe any event in memory of Jesus Christ’s birth. Without question we are to know and understand His birth and babyhood, as the Gospel testimonies have recorded them. And for this reason, unlike the European continent, Britian and her colonies (America) never took much notice of Christmas until Dickens’s novel Christmas Carol became popular after 1843.
Though we have no Bible mandate for any Christmas form of celebration, it is biblical to recall to mind the facts of the matter that the Bible gives to us about Christmas, namely, Peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
In his own way, Rex Gard showed our family goodwill. I recall it with fondness. In all events, a Christian cultural spirit pervades the Christmas days because no matter what else may be wrong about the extra-biblical Babylonian trappings and economic promotions of modern Christmas, God still makes straight licks with us crooked sticks, as we recall to mind the Old Testament’s promise of Imanuel: Ima (with) nu (us) el (God), meaning God with us. Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22–23.
Indeed, Jesus Christ entered the stream of Adam’s race in fulfillment of the Hebrew Old-Testament promise, God in human flesh, dwelling among mankind as a member of our race, and within His men and women by His Spirit.
Peace and Goodwill,
Brent