Still wondering...

(Continued from January 3rd)

A few years ago some of us got to wondering about that young girl and her boyfriend, and about the baby too. Seems to me, and some other people in town, that this whole thing kinda got started with them. – Some say they had nothing to do with it, and we just started doing this because we needed a little break in the middle of winter. Others claim we’ve always done it. And I’ve even heard some people say there’s no good evidence that "the Co-op thing" really happened. But most folks don’t seem to think about it much at all. They say we just do it for the kids, and for the family, and that it’s good for business.

Some of us, however, just can’t help wondering, and now there are some groups and individuals dedicated to investigating the story. Some meet regularly, write books and pamphlets, ask questions, and follow leads. Personally I just like to blog and talk with anyone who’s interested.

Some people say the government, and/or multinational corporations, are involved in a cover-up, trying to get us to forget the Co-op thing or believe it never really happened, but I think it’s simpler than that. Most people are too busy, especially at the end of the year, to go looking for “the story behind the story”, so to speak. And the whole thing is good for the kids and the family and business, so people don’t want to get too serious about it and maybe mess up a good thing. Just let the hens roost and ejoy the eggs, they figure. And sometimes, when I’ve spent another sleepless night talking or blogging about it, I think maybe they’re right. But then I always start wondering about that baby boy – he’d be all grown up now – and I start trying to find him all over again.

And there’s a funny little story that turns up from time to time, though I’ve never been able to nail it down completely. – Sometimes it’s attributed to the Co-op manager, but he disappeared a few weeks after the event, and no one seems to know exactly where he went. And sometimes a cashier or stock-boy is the source. – But anyway, the story goes that a couple of weeks after the “night in question” three people show up at the Co-op store making “discreet inquiries”. They’ve come a long way, from some big eastern think-tank or university, and must have somehow known this thing was going to happen. But, anyway, no one has anything much to tell them, so they leave town pretty quick.

End of story, except that a few days later some high-powered businessman pulls up in a limo and starts asking some very indiscreet questions of his own about the baby and the three who were looking for him. When no one can tell him anything he get’s angry, threatens the manager and storms out. A few days later, the Co-op gets trashed, and a few days after that the manager puts his house up for sale and leaves town.

Maybe it’s just a story, one of those urban legends, but it seems to me people generally fall into three groups. Some, like the guy in the limo, are kind of angry about the whole thing, like it’s all some kind of personal insult or a threat to their way of life. Others, like the manager, don’t know much and don’t want to know. They just want to keep their head down and stay out of the way. But me,... well, I’m in the third group. Like those profs, or whatever they were, I just need to know what this big, bizarre mystery is all about.

Of course, sometimes I think it’s all too crazy to matter, but then someone asks a question, or makes an offhand remark, or the end of December comes around and people start putting up reindeer and sox again, and I just can’t help wondering....

Just wondering...

When I stopped by Tim Hortons that morning, like I always did on Fridays, it was closed. Tim Hortons, closed? About a dozen people were milling around, shaking their heads and talking in hushed tones. Angels, someone said, in a field just south of town, off highway 41. Swamp gas and a case of Pilsner, I thought. But still, Tim Hortons... closed. Who ever heard of such a thing?

By the time I got to work the talk was everywhere. The shop was closed, and everyone just standing at the gate, or sitting in their cars, like back at Tim’s, and talking. Jeff and Pete were going on about some kids who’d had a baby in a shed behind the Co-op. And Rita said she heard they’d left town early, before anyone had even got their names. Something about someone trying to kill them. Girl’s dad no doubt.

This is not the sort of thing that ever happens around here. Maybe in a big city like New York, or even Toronto, but not here. It’s all very sad of course, but since we never heard any more about them we figured that they must have been okay. But the shop closed?... on a regular Friday?... a long weekend at the end of December?... just a week before the New Year break? What’s that about? And Tim Hortons never closes, I wondered. Everybody wondered.

By noon reindeer started showing up, and all the kids were out of school. Someone put a string of lights on the big tree down at city hall, and I heard some kids laughing and saying they’d found things in their sox when they got up this morning; good things. And when I called home to see if Sandy had heard anything she told me her folks were coming for dinner. On a Friday night? On bowling night?

Seems a long time ago now, but ever since that day, every year: the factory closes, schools, stores and businesses take time off, and Tim Hortons shuts down for the whole day. And every year there are reindeer in store widows and on rooftops, and lights on trees and houses. Sandy’s parents come for dinner, every year, even if it’s bowling night – the bowling alley’s closed. And we all find presents in our sox, and give each other presents. We actually put sox out now, and some have even made special sox just for this one night. And no one seems to know quite why it happens.

To be continued...

Christmas 2009

So, there goes Christmas for another year. Well, actually only Christmas day. And, even more actually, just Christmas morning, but you know what I mean. We build up to this two hour happy fit all year and its all over in, well... two hours. But then again we still have Boxing Day and the rest of the twelve days of the season through January sixth. By then I’ll be glad to put feasting and frolicking behind me for another year. But we’re about to put a turkey in the oven, and there’s still plenty of egg-nog, so party on!!!

Suzanne and I are spending Christmas in North Bay with our oldest boy, his wife and two year old daughter. Our second oldest is also with us. What fun to be with a little child at Christmas. This is the first year she’s really been aware of what’s going on and we had to play down Santa a little because she was getting very nervous about him coming into the house while we were all asleep. She seems to think that a nocturnal home invasion is invariably a bad thing. – Too much CNN. – She’s feeling more positive about the old saint now.

God bless you all, and I hope you’ve had a great year and a wonderful Christmas. Here’s a picture of the stockings this morning. The funny one, second from the left, is a doggy sweater, and the ridiculously huge one is for our grand daughter. You could literally put several boxes of Cheerios in it, but that didn’t happen this year.

Ready for Christmas

Remember Scrooge, when his heart had been changed by the Spirits of Christmas, which are of course the Spirit of Jesus. He was suddenly ready to receive God, and all of the “God things” in his life: invitations to give to the poor and share with fellow human beings; the opportunity to embrace the nephew who had disappointed him, to forgive his nephew and, what is even harder, to receive his forgiveness; and the responsibility of cherishing his clerk, Bob Cratchit, helping him raise his family, and finding some way to heal their Tiny Tim.

At the end of the 1952 movie with Alistair Sim, Scrooge orders Cratchit to go out and buy a new coal scuttle. Then he sits at his desk laughing and saying to himself, “O, I don’t deserve to be so happy.” Then, tossing his pen over his shoulder, he chuckles, “I can’t help it. I just can’t help it”. These are the last words he utters in the movie. But it isn’t really happiness we see portrayed in this scene. It’s joy.

When I was a child my father had a little poem he used to read to us each Christmas Eve. It was one of the many Christmas traditions we had in our family, and I share it with you in the hope that it will help in your Christmas preparations as it always did in ours. It is an invitation to refocus on what really matters at Christmas; an invitation to JOY.

Ready for Christmas

"Ready for Christmas", she said with a sigh,

As she gave the last touch to the gifts piled high.

Then wearily sat for a moment and read,

Till soon, very soon, she was nodding her head.

Then quietly spoke a voice in her dream,

"Ready for Christmas? Just what do you mean?

Ready for Christmas, when only last week,

You wouldn't acknowledge a friend on the street?

Ready for Christmas, while holding a grudge?

Perhaps we had better let him be the Judge.

For how can the Christ child, come, and abide,

In a heart that's so selfish and filled with pride?

"Ready for Christmas, when only today,

That homeless boy there and you looked away,

Without even a smile to show that you cared?

The little he needed, could well have been spared.

Ready for Christmas? You've worked, it is true,

But just doing the things that you wanted to do.

Ready for Christmas? Your circle's too small.

No, you are not ready for Christmas at all."

She awoke with a start, and a cry of despair.

"There's so little time, and I've still to prepare.

O, Father forgive me; I see what you mean,

To be ready is more than a house swept clean.

It's more than the giving of gifts and a tree.

It's a heart swept clean that he wants to see.

A heart that is free from bitterness sin.

Ready for Christmas, and ready for him."

--Alice Haneche Mortensen

Sunday, the Fourth Week of Advent

JOY

When I was a child I remember my mother worrying every Christmas that she wouldn’t be ready. This was a great mystery to me. If there was anything in the world I was always ready for it was Christmas. But every year I’d catch her muttering under her breath, “I’ll never be ready!, I’ll never be ready”. And every year she would, at some point, sit us all down (8 children) and say, “You’ll all have to pitch in and do more, or we won’t be ready, and Christmas just won’t come this year.” I don’t remember that we actually did pitch in and do more, but I do remember that Christmas managed to come somehow, every year.

So, are you ready for Christmas? Well, if not, don’t worry too much about it. In my experience Christmas happens every 25^th of December,…ready or not. And it’s always wonderful.

And, just think about that first Christmas. Were Mary and Joseph “ready” for the birth of Jesus? They didn’t have a nursery set up with a little crib and hanging mobile. They didn’t have a house, or an apartment, or even a room in an inn. But God had chosen them and, presumably, had been preparing them all their lives. He seemed to think they were ready for this.

They were ready to devote their lives to making a family for the Son of God; to bear the shame of an untimely pregnancy, and the dangers of being on the wrong side of King Herod; and ready to manage the uncertainties of raising the Messiah. In short, they were ready to drop everything when God called on them and, in this uncertain world, it’s hard to be much more ready than that. And if the proof is in the pudding, this Christmas pudding turned out just fine.

As we light the fourth candle and enter the fourth week of Advent, the Christmas week, the accumulated love, peace and hope of the previous three weeks turns to joy. But to enter into joy we must deal those old joy thieves, Stress and Anxiety.

You see, no one is ever ready for God, in the sense of having everything in order. We can never have enough decorations up, baking done, presents wrapped, cards sent, parties organized, or worship services planned for God. Whatever we do, he deserves infinitely more. But what we can have is what Mary and Joseph had; hearts ready to recognize him, give him top priority, drop everything and welcome him.

Joy doesn’t come from trees and cards and gifts, not even from parties and friends and family. Joy is the state of being we are in when we’re ready to receive God at a moment’s notice, drop everything and celebrate. As Isaac Watts wrote, way back in 1719:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come,

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing.