Bringing Joy

The first Christmas gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh delivered over 2000 years ago. The following contemporary stories are more about the giving than the gifts:

Homemade Train
This story isn’t a Christmas story, exactly. It does have to do with giving. My third oldest brother is the family inventor. He either makes something from “scratch” or improves on it and makes it his own. He sliced sections off several barrel sides, siliconed garden hose over the rough edges and added little wooden seats and backs for little wiggling bodies. Attaching wheels and fastening the barrels together made an impressive train. It was a hit with his many progeny.

Tractor drivers took turns pulling the Little Blue Train full of squealing cousins through their wooded farm campground that Leo, Pat, and their four kids created for amazing family adventures along the Dowagiac Creek.

When I left Michigan, nephew Josh and brother Leo tucked a Little Blue Car into the Cavalier’s reclined back seat. Reassembled and fastened to a different tractor, it was waiting in the yard for another cousin when he came home from school. With a bright red sign, “Will’s Train,” on the back, my seven-year-old grandson whirled around the trees on his Virginia mountaintop. The laughing spirits of umpteen cousins whom he had never met, accompanied him.

Christmas Dinner
Dan, another single RVer, relayed this story to me. He didn’t brag, making the gesture sound like a big sacrifice, but for sure I could tell it made him feel good inside just to remember it.
He watched a family come into the restaurant where he awaited his Christmas dinner. The kids and their mother were way more excited about the occasion than he was, but he was enchanted with their high spirits and good manners. He only guessed at why the father was missing or whether it was a sacrifice for this mother to take her small tribe out for a special celebration.

He observed their gaiety, enjoying his dinner and theirs. He suddenly thought of a gift he wanted to give himself. When he was through eating, he took one last look at the happy family scene. He paid for his dinner and theirs, and smiled all the way back to the campground. I suspect somewhere a young mother with a batch of youngsters has her own warm fuzzy memories of a stranger who bought them Christmas dinner.

Gifts from Friends
Apparently, it was the twelve days before Christmas. I didn’t realize for several days that gifts lived in the giant red stocking hanging on the motorhome grill. I would never have checked it, but a candy cane hung over the edge. When I laughingly picked it up, I found several wrapped gifts inside. Each day until the 25th, I found a new Christmas gift inside, gum, fruit, a decoration, etc. It was great fun and didn’t take too much sleuthing to discover that RV neighbors Howard and Nancy Rex were the elves behind the scene.

Sharing home-baked goodies isn’t so different from when I was landbound, except that often I don’t recognize the giver. Sometimes when I answer my RV door, it is someone from the campground that I have never met. Part of their Christmas cheer is spending a morning making special candy or cookies and delivering them to whomever is within reach. Just as often, it is the face of friends delivering to other friends throughout the park. It might be goodies, a Christmas card, or occasionally an invitation to a party.

We never know how these seemingly small incidents are remembered through the years. Monday mornings after a weekend of holiday baking with Tracey and Janet when they were growing up, my husband would take a huge platter heaped with cookies to work with him. Last summer I visited the widow of his boss at that time. After all these years, she mentioned once again how the guys from the shop devoured those “huge filled mincemeat cookies” with such gusto.

Christmas Village
The houses, barns, stores, churches and the lighthouse snuggle deep in sparkling snow. A sleigh brings its riders into town through a covered bridge that crosses a frozen stream. It is dusk and the lamplighter is lighting the lamps. A small mirror lake reflects the skaters on this wintry night. Tiny Christmas lights twinkle throughout the village.

This village exists precariously with underlying boards, cardboard boxes of various sizes, a royal blue blanket and white fluffy cotton.

Two-foot-tall Nutcracker figures, one with a sword and the other beating a drum, guard each side of this 3- x 6-foot Christmas window in my shed/office that looks out over Saguaro Park, high desert country, and beyond to the mountain. A timer turns everything on inside and out at 5:30 a.m., off during daylight hours, on at sunset, and off again about 9:30 at night.

Shortly after 5:30 a.m., the “Gravel Crunchers” begin their daily walks through the park and around North Ranch. I have often looked up from working on the computer to find Voni, the activities director, gazing at the village scene. She donated a few village pieces and loves viewing new additions or changes. Others come and bring friends and relatives throughout the season. It is my Christmas gift to North Ranch friends.

Outside, the desert tree in my garden wears countless colored lights. Beneath it in a 2- x 5-foot blue-lighted and Plexiglas-protected wooden box, handmade camels, sheep, shepherds, kings, and the Holy Family are a bit shaky in papier-mâché over plastic-bottle bodies.

With a little imagination and faith, the Nativity comes alive in the star-filled silent night. The faintly suggested background becomes Bethle-hem. The humble straw-strewn stable becomes the place where Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary.

I wish for you the joy of the season with family, friends, and fellow RVers.

Merry Christmas.