The size of the family on my mother’s side doubled whenever Harry and Ethel Smith and their brood showed up. Harry was Mom’s baby brother, tall and fit and rakishly handsome with black hair and a grin that revealed strong white teeth. Ethel was short, always happy with smiles and ready laughter. She seemed sort of boneless, like one of those round pork roasts in grocery stores that are held together with white string. As a child, I always thought of her as fat. Later I came to realize she was just always pregnant.
Harry and Ethel had 10 kids, the oldest eight one right after another. There was a lapse of a few years before they started up again and they probably would have had a few more but Harry died of a heart attack one sweltering summer day while working in the woods of northwest Montana. To have the fire of such a vibrant, life-loving man extinguished was a deep blow to the family.
Harry and Ethel lived in an old paint-flaked farmhouse with a front lawn that was kept bare by horses, chickens, goats, and barefooted runny-nosed kids. It wasn’t until the older kids were in high school that the outhouse gave way to a flush toilet in a tiny bathroom Harry squeezed in between the kitchen and back porch. The house was wall-to-wall kids, commotion, laughter, and chaos. It smelled of wet diapers, laundry soap (since doing laundry was a never-ending chore), and good food (since something was always bubbling on the stove).
I loved going there. It was like attending summer camp. Everyone always had a project or something going on. In the summer we rode horses in the river and milked cows and chased down errant calves. In the winter we played cards and jacks, did puzzles and romped in the snow. And we ate. Ethel made the best rolls this side of Heaven, kneading the dough, like she did everything else—with a baby jiggling on her hip.
The year I was eight or nine we had Christmas at Grammy and Granddad's. It was a cold but beautiful sunny day and the snow glinted with diamonds. My other cousins and I had already made a dozen runs with our sleds down the big hill and had been called in to get ready for dinner. Auntie Jane and Mom were fluttering around wondering what to do with all the food since Harry and Ethel were late. All of a sudden, there they all were. Bleeding and bruised and agitated and every single one of them talking a mile a minute. It seemed that Harry had driven the back roads and had missed the corner at the end of a long steep hill a mile away. The car slid through a fence, bounced through the ditch and ended up in a cattail-studded swamp. Miraculously, no one was really hurt.
They had walked the rest of the way, Ethel in high heels and tearfully carrying in front of her a small gaily-wrapped package containing the remains of a teacup she’d intended to give Grammy, and Harry lugging the newest baby.
While the women tended to the cuts and tears, the men took a pickup and a logging chain and went about the business of retrieving the injured car. Personally, I was very interested in the success of getting the car since the trunk was piled deep with presents. Including mine.
We had so much to be thankful for that Christmas day. We were all safe. We were whole. We had each other. That wonderful feeling took over that day, dwarfing everything else. As the subject of the car crash was brought up again and again, the tree didn’t seem as important, nor were the gifts. We were important. Each and every one of us.
This Christmas there are a lot of people who are battered and bruised and bloodied by life. There will be empty places at the Christmas table. In countless homes plates will be salted with tears as heads are bowed to ask God’s blessing.
Life is hard. Life is tragic. Many people won’t even receive the gift of a shattered teacup this year. Others don’t know how they will provide food for their children, let alone presents. Devastated finances, burned-out homes, divorce, illness, death….the list of what can go wrong in a life is endless.
This is a frantic time of year. A time when we strive to be perfect, to give the perfect gifts and to have the perfect Christmas. We spend too much and eat too much and lose track of what’s important. And on December 26 we wallow in guilt and vow that next year it will be different. After two months of glitter and glitz the world suddenly seems ugly and cold and hopeless.
But we are never without hope. And we are never without love. We are surrounded by God’s love and just need to reach out and grab it. He is our hope.
As you come together to celebrate Christmas, please take a few minutes to remember that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. And in him there is hope, peace, love, comfort, joy, and eternal life. There may not have been room at the inn, but there is room in your heart and that’s all he wants—a place in your heart. What a wonderful gift to give our Lord. And what a change it will bring to your life.
I pray that all of you have a very merry, blessed, Christmas.
