Remembering past Christmas Eves

Several months ago, when my granddaughter found an arrowhead in my garden, and I, a week later, found a small bright blue Indian bead, I thought of them. He always liked collecting arrowheads and showing them. They were a couple I knew in the church I have been writing about in my postings on revival and the Jesus Movement.

The first building Warehouse Ministries occupied was, you guessed, a warehouse. Across from, on the same side of the street ,was a restaurant. We, people from the church, would all pile into the restaurant after services or Saturday night concerts. Our table was always full. My husband, myself, our six children and many friends around one large table.

Our waitress was often a young, beautiful woman who it turned out was supporting two small children by herself. We always talked together and finally began exchanging visits in each others homes. Around Christmas we invited her for a meal and gave her a Bible as a present. And then she disappeared.

When she finally contacted us, she had met and fallen in love with him, the arrowhead collector. They came to church, received Jesus as Lord and Savior and continue on there today. I still remember some Christmas Eves we spent together, mostly the fun and laughter, the food and lights on the tree, and the good Christian fellowship.

During those years, another Christmas Eve I remember we attended a Catholic midnight mass. A group of young people from our church, who had been nominal Catholics but had recently come to Christ, asked us to go with them to Christmas Eve mass. I only remember a few things about that night. The church, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, now restored, was huge and dark. We all set together filling a whole pew. When we were to ‘pass the peace’ it was with exuberant hugs. I remember the quiet Delta tule fog after service and the man under the streetlight asking for a little change.

But what I remember most clearly was the woman sitting behind me who whispered to the person next to her, “My dear, I only came to see the baby Jesus.”

Her statement and attitude projected not amazement that the Christ child was very God and very human, but that Christianity and Christmas were only about a good child and a fuzzy warmth. I wrote a small poem about this later, the next week. (And it is important to know that this was the years that a doll named ‘baby alive’ was marketed.)

“My Dear, I only came to see the baby Jesus!"

Release the babe!
The imaged doll,
Congregator of chained smiling humanity.
Oh Holy child, break out into the Man.

We worship before the gilded crib.
A pink and pampered god,
Baby Alive;
Never dead and never resurrected

Obeisance made a dreamy, diapered child;
A blood soaked God rejected in his cries and tears.
Preferable to hold our god
then a Lord to hold us, enfolding our fears