Opinion

Pastor Paul and Jannie Edwards were staying with Buck and Cat Rogers. Cat had inherited her parents three bedroom home. The Edwards rented house had been destroyed when a gas leak was accidentally ignited. The evangelists Bro. and Sis. Love were also staying with them.

The Bible study that day had ended a bit earlier than usual, and they had played some games and fellowshipped, then someone had a rather deep life question, and God answered in such a way that the whole group was drawn into worship. Two more people received the Holy Ghost in the Rogers living room on Christmas Eve.

The Edwards, Loves, and Rogers all sat around the brazier in the front room, reading a book or chatting on-line. The room was comfortable, the lighting was perfect, the fire in the brazier hypnotically drew everyone’s gaze. Jannie Edwards had just come in from the kitchen with a tray full of mugs brimming with hot chocolate topped with marshmallows. Cat was using Buck for a pillow, laying on her back with her eyes closed. Buck lovingly caressed her eyebrows. If humans could purr Cat would have done so.

All in all, this was the first Christmas Eve Cat could ever remember feeling that she was surrounded by loving family.

“I remember when I was a little girl” began Jannie Edwards “Mom would let me help her bake cookies and fresh bread. Dad put the lights on our Christmas wreath because we didn’t have a tree, and then we would light the fire in the fireplace and wait for Santa. I always put out some of my cookies with a big glass of milk for Santa.”

Paul Edwards continued. “I remember one year I wanted a sled so bad. The other kids had one, and the city had marked our street as a “no plowing” zone, because it was on a hill and we could sled down it. I wanted that sled so bad.”

“But there was no sled under the tree. Dad had just started a church in that town and there wasn’t much money, but he got Mom and me both a small package. But it wasn’t a sled. I stayed in my room until they called me to come out Christmas morning: I had to go into the bathroom and wash my face first because I had been crying. Mom came in a got me. She said Dad tried really hard to get me what I wanted, and I was breaking his heart staying in here crying. She said I needed to think about Dad once in a while and not just me, and besides, how did I know I wouldn’t like what I got.”

“I had to work at it but I prayed and washed my face and came out. And Dad handed me the little package. When I unwrapped it it was a box. When I opened the box there was another package in it. There were like four packages in that stupid box, each inside another. When I opened the last box I almost cried. I could not see anything at all in it — just packing paper. Then I saw a note at the bottom. It just said “Go and look outside.”

“And you got your sled?” asked Jannie.

“Oh yes. It was a Flexible Flier. Red. Big enough to lay down on: bigger than the other kids.” reflected Paul. “And I cried all night before because I thought I wouldn’t get what I wanted. ”

“So what did you do?” asked Philia Love.

“I went back to my Dad and hugged him.” said Paul. “I told him I was sorry that I didn’t believe enough in him and was thinking only of what I wanted. I told him if it cost too much and he had to take it back then I would understand.”

“Then what happened?” asked Jannie.

“He sat me on his lap, and I hugged him and we cried. It was so hard, building a church. That’s all Dad ever did: he got them started, then God would call us to another city to start another, and someone who had sacrificed nothing to earn that church would get it all ready to go with 100 saints and a salary. It seemed so terribly unfair. I couldn’t stop crying so I slipped off Dad’s lap and started praying beside the couch, and Dad prayed with me. In time I was worshiping God for being so kind to us instead of crying because we — because I — didn’t have ‘things’ as others did. Finally I repented of my selfishness and I told God that I would serve him no matter what — it didn’t matter if I never got anything else. And God filled me with the Holy Ghost there by that beat up second hand couch. I got more than a sled. I got what I really needed, and it changed my life.”

“I was so sorry I had acted selfish as I had, that Sunday I brought the sled as my offering. Dad didn’t want me to do it, but I insisted. One of the elders auctioned it off then and there. It brought in four thousand dollars and ten people prayed through to the Holy Ghost in that service. I thought I’d never see my sled again, but it was worth it.”

“Monday, after I came home from school my sled was by the back door. There was a note attached. It said “Cast your bread on many waters: you know not which will return to you. Perhaps it all will.”

The room was silent except for a few stifled sniffles.

“So Buck, what kind of Christmas memories do you have?” asked Paul Edwards, as he brushed back a tear.

“Well yeah” said Cat, as she sat up and turned to her husband. “This is your first Christmas as a human. Give.”

“Did you get to see Jesus when he was born?” asked Jannie. “I mean did you talk with him and stuff?”

“Well, I remember what he did on Calvary a lot more than when he was born.” stated Buck, honestly. “It was about two years before the star gazers — wise men — visited them from Asia and Herod tried to kill him. Basically he looked like he was just a baby with a really BIG contingent of angel guards. I was still kinda overshadowed by the underworld at that point, so we really didn’t have much good information. And it was in the spring, not December 25.”

“What did people do to celebrate Christmas in the first century?” asked Jannie.

“Well, nothing. ” answered Buck. “A few people celebrate Christ’s baptism, but no one celebrated the birth of Christ. Druids celebrated the Winter equinox, when day is at its shortest the whole year, and the Romans celebrated the ‘birth of the unconquered Sun’, also on December 25.”

“As time went on though, stuff happened.” Buck continued. “Barbarian hordes invaded Rome from the north. After 400 AD the Roman Catholic group really started to come into power, and they basically ruled through the dark ages. By putting Christian words and names to the existing pagan holiday on December 25, they hoped to eventually convert the pagan conquerors to Roman Catholicism. It worked.”

“At first the Christmas Day celebration was radically different than you know. It was like a pagan celebration with major drinking and revelry. ” Buck reflected on his days as Puck, when he would scare young women or do a week’s work in one night if they left him a bowel of cream. “And in time it did lend itself to some fair entertainment and usually more than one bowl of cream.”

“There was one time I remember, in the Netherlands. I was following this really rich money changer guy around who was working with this priest to defraud this old guy of his house. He had three daughters but his wife had died of pneumonia when they were very young. He had to raise them himself, which wasn’t easy for a man in those days.”

“The money changer I can understand but why was the priest against this guy?” asked Philia Love.

“You must understand,” answered Buck “Roman Catholicism cannot be supported by scripture. Any thing that raises public awareness of scriptural Truth is a threat. You also must realize that all through the ages, even through the dark ages, God has always had witnesses — people who know and teach the Truth. This guy was one of them. It was illegal for him to have a Bible, but he had got one and kept it hidden. He taught his children the Truth. The Priest did not want that to continue, because if it grew it would cause problems for him.”

The room was silent, Bucks family sipping from their hot cocoa and waiting for the rest of the story.

“Go on baby” said Cat “How did you find these guys?”

“Well, thoughts and words have power. God actually SPOKE the universe into existence, and humans share some of that power because they are made in God’s likeness. Greed and malice emanate from greedy and malicious people and draw demonic attention the way body heat and breath draw mosquitoes. It was a no brainer. These guys I could torque and God would open a cold Coke and sit down to watch.”

“Surly he would not!” offered Agape Love. “Why they’re still people! And they didn’t even have Coke back then!”

A figure in white robes, which Buck and Cat could see but the others could not, walked in, smiled, and sat down in the empty chair behind Agape. Buck and Cat smiled back and watched so that the others turned to look, but of course they saw an empty chair. The figure pulled a glass of ice from his robe with one hand and a Coke dripping with icy drops of water with the other, popped the tab, and started to pour it into the glass. Half way through he stopped, then set the glass and half full can of Coke on a table behind him, using a magazine to protect the table. He opened his left hand and another cup of hot cocoa appeared, of the same design as their cups, complete with marshmallows over the top. He smiled and nodded to Buck as if to say “Please continue.”

“Well, ” replied Buck “I’m just telling it like it is. God knows yesterday from forever and Coke got invented by someone sometime. In God’s eyes it always existed. Time is like cards in a Rolodex to him.”

The figure smiled and took a careful sip of his cocoa.

“So anyway,” Buck continued, “I followed this money changer guy around, and it turns out he is pressuring this cobbler guy with the three daughters to sell his daughters as servants.”

“SELL them?!” spouted Jannie. “Like animals?”

“Yes. They were quite pretty, but it was time for them to marry. In those days the father had to provide a dowry with the bride. If the girl did not please her husband, he could return her with the dowry. If he didn’t have the dowry he had to keep the wife no matter how bad she was. That dowry represented her personal worth, because as long as he kept her, it meant he kept her because he wanted to keep her, not because he had no choice.”

“Pigs” mumbled Jannie, under her breath.

“It was a different world then, dear.” said her husband Paul. “I can understand. I would keep you no matter what. ”

“Is that related to the story Jesus told about the woman who lost a coin, so she lit a candle and swept the whole house until she found it?” asked Agape.

The figure in white raised his cup in a toast Agape.

“Yes.” answered Buck “Like that. Anyway, with no dowry, no marriage. So the only thing he could do was sell them as bond servants to someone. They could never marry, so they could never have children, so that solved the priest’s problem. The Linage of Faith would die out leaving only Roman Catholicism.”

“The jerk” muttered Jannie.

“Rich jerk” added Cat. “So what did you do Buck? You didn’t let them get away with that, did you?”

“Of course not” smiled Buck. The figure in white smiled too. “At first I tried making extra shoe components for him, and introducing unusual amounts of wear in believable ways on people’s shoes so they would have to come to him and buy more. But it wasn’t enough. The priest was pressing him to either marry off or sell those daughters.”

“What did you do?” asked Cat.

“Well, I consulted with someone who knows things” Buck nodded at the figure in white “and upon solid advice I re-allocated certain coins from a secret stash the money changer had stolen from a man who died earlier that year. There was more there than that, and he was legally bound to return it to the family, but he hid it. There was more than enough there for three dowries. Then I needed a way to deliver it so that they would get it but they wouldn’t get accused of stealing.”

“What did you do?” asked Philia.

“Well, I looked around, ” said Buck “and I saw the only thing in the room really was four chairs, a table and their stockings hanging to dry by the fireplace. Soooooo, I dropped the coins into each girl’s stocking, then I stomped around in the fireplace and made some tracks around the front of it — enough the villagers would think someone else was involved, not this poor old guy. And to top it all off, I knocked over a chair and waited for him to wake up — I had to do it about six times before one of them got it — and then I scooted up the chimney behind the stockings so a little slime and ash would flutter down. But they STILL didn’t get it. So I bumped each stocking to make them swing from the hook and yelled HO HO HO!”

“Ummm. No.” said Jannie.

“Ho ho ho Merry Christmas” corrected the figure in white.

“Yes, how could I forget. ‘Ho ho ho Merry Christmas’. They found the stockings, which swung oddly with weight in the toes, their dads arranged marriages with three good men, and they did live good happy lives after that, and the Linage of Faith continued.” summarized Buck.

The figure in white smiled, set his almost empty cocoa cup beside the coke glass on the magazine, kissed his hand and waved to Cat and Buck, and disappeared.

“Buck, I never know if you are pulling my leg or telling the truth. You are telling us you were the original Saint Nick?” sighed Jannie as she stood to collect the cups to wash them. “Hey, where did this cup come from? I brought in six but there are seven here. And who left half a glass of Coke here?”

“Well” said Buck “Merry Christmas. God Blessed us everyone.”

“Amen” said the group together.