Part of what it means to be human is to know that the world is always far greater than we will ever comprehend and the God is as close to us as our next breath. It’s something that we learn at Christmas because wondrous things happen at Christmas. Amazing things.
My grandmother lived in Southampton County across the bay in a little house by the edge of a small forest. I loved going to visit Grandma. I always knew that when we got to her house after traveling, no matter how late it was, there was always going to be food. We would walk in and the house would smell like fried chicken or ham. There would always be homemade biscuits and damson preserves. And, if we were lucky, caramel cake, the kind that Mrs. Laura Dennis makes.
Back behind her house she had a big garden that she worked with her neighbor and behind that, at the edge of the woods, was a collection of farm animals. There was a chicken coop where she got eggs (and the fried chicken), two pigs, and a donkey. One time when I was there as a boy I spent hours trying to learn to talk to the chickens. They were fascinating to me.
Well, one Christmas we got to Grandma’s house on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. I was very excited. I spent the rest of the day trying to find things to do to kill time until dark. I went down to see the chickens. I even talked to the pigs and the donkey. I climbed the big tree in Grandma’s back yard. I ran back into the woods and practiced tightrope walking across a narrow tree trunk that had fallen over a creek. Finally it was night and after a great meal around Grandma’s table I went to bed.
I usually got to sleep in the front room of Grandma’s house in a big bed that took up most of a small room. It was a cedar four-poster bed and it was a lot bigger than my bed at home. I felt a lot older when I got to sleep in that bed.
It took me a long time to go to sleep that night, though. It was Christmas Eve! I kept thinking that I heard things outside. Do you know what I mean? And every time the house would creak I’d sit up in bed and listen.
Finally, after HOURS of this, I went to sleep. And I stayed asleep until 11:31. I know it was 11:31 because that’s what the clock said when I woke up with a start and looked at it. I didn’t know what had woken me up so I just listened and I heard a tap, tap, tap on the window. At first, I didn’t believe it was real, so I sat real still in the bed and there it was again – tap, tap, tap. I went over to the window and I slowly pulled back the curtain and there was a bright red cardinal tapping on the window with his beak. I tried to shoo him away, but he just tapped again like he was trying to get my attention.
Then I noticed that behind him there was a beagle from the house down the dirt road where my Grandma lived. The beagle was looking right at me and jumping up and down and letting out little yips. He also kept turning his head like he was beckoning me to go out there with him.
Now this is a strange thing to happen at 11:31 at night. Or 11:31 in the morning for that matter. And I couldn’t decide whether I was dreaming or not. But it was Christmas Eve and all kinds of amazing things happen on Christmas Eve, so I pulled on my sweatshirt and my jeans and I slipped on my tennis shoes and I tiptoed out through my Grandma’s front room. The moon was really bright so I could see my way without cutting on any lights. It was shining off the copper jello molds my Grandma kept on the wall of her kitchen. I opened the front door and went outside.
It was really bright out there. The light from the moon made all the trees seem like they were made of silver. The even cast moonshadows on the ground. The grass was glistening with frost like someone had scattered diamonds all around.
When I came around the corner to the window of my room, there were the cardinal and the beagle and now two other birds that I didn’t recognize. As soon as she saw me the beagle jumped up and yipped so loudly that I thought she’d wake up everyone else in the house. But no lights went on and the beagle started trotting towards the forest, turning around every so often to see if I was following. The birds were flying along behind. This had to be a dream, I thought.
We got back to the pens where the animals were kept and something strange had happened. The chickens had organized. At night they were closed into a coop that was in the middle of a fenced-in area. They had somehow climbed up one of the diagonal rails in the coop and had lifted the latch off the door. By the time I got there the door was wide open and all the chickens had lined up by the fence that surrounded the coop. There were three chickens standing on top of one another pushing up on the latch that kept that door closed. They opened that one, too, and they all poured out of the fence. This had to be a dream.
The pigs were lined up, too, waiting patiently by the gate to their pen. When I got to them, they looked up at me with their little pig eyes and I knew what they were expecting. So since everybody else was making a break for it, I figured the pigs should come, too. I opened the gate and out they came to join the chickens.
Then I looked and saw that, somehow, the donkey had gotten out, too. He was standing there looking at me with his sad, old donkey eyes. He gestured with his head towards his back and I knew what he wanted me to do. So I crawled up on his back and he started lumbering off down a path into the woods.
I looked back and all the animals were following him. The pigs were grunting and snorting. The chickens were all over the place, walking in and out of the legs of the donkey, jumping up on top of the pigs, clucking when they stumbled into each other. Every so often I saw the cardinal and the other birds in the trees. But they all seemed to know where they were going.
We walked back into a part of the forest where I had never been before. It was ten or fifteen minutes that we walked. We walked until we came to a clearing where the moonlight poured in from overhead like a bright star shining down on us. And in that clearing was the largest collection of animals I had ever seen. Every animal in the forest was there. White-tailed deer, otters, beaver, weasels, foxes, groundhogs, squirrels… skunks. And several animals from the houses around. There was a cow and some sheep and a couple of noisy goats. Birds and even some snakes. They were all gathered there in that clearing in the woods.
There was lots of commotion and confusion. All the animals seemed to be waiting for something. Then they all started to quiet down. I was still sitting on the donkey’s back and I said to myself, out loud, “What in the world is going on here?” And that donkey turned back towards me and said, “Shh.” Which was a little surprising to say the least.
So I shushed. Everything got quiet and I saw that the animals had arranged themselves in a circle and that the sheep were escorting another creature into the middle of the circle. It was the wisest, most respected member of the forest community. That’s right. It was an old possum.
The possum got up on its hind legs and looked around at all of the animals. The moon shone down on his pink nose and eyes so that he seemed to almost glow. Not even a twig stirred in the wind. Everyone was looking at the possum.
“Welcome, brothers and sisters of the forest,” the possum said. “Give thanks. Light and life have come again. It’s Christmas!”
You never heard such a racket then. All of the animals cheered and brayed and snorted and shouted…they actually shouted!…“Merry Christmas!” I saw a bunch of bees appear and they started buzzing together. And it was like a song.
I leaned down to the ear of the donkey and asked, “What’s going on?”
The donkey was very patient with me. “It’s midnight,” he said in a deep, donkey voice. “This is the hour when the baby Jesus was born. And who were the first to see the baby?”
“The shepherds?” I guessed.
“No, it was the animals! The animals in the mangers were the first to see what God was doing and ever since then, at midnight on Christmas Eve, the animals have been able to speak and to tell what our ancestors told us about that first Christmas. So the birds sing and the bees sing and we shout with joy for the new-born king. We used to do it in Latin but we haven’t done that since Vatican 2.”
“But…”
“Shh…Old Possum is ready to tell the story.”
So he did. The Possum told about how the angel had come to Mary to tell her that God had not forgotten the earth, had not forgotten the people. The angel told her that she was going to have a child and that child would be the savior of the world. Even though she was just a young woman at the time and even though she couldn’t even understand all that the angel told her, Mary had said, “Yes, let it happen as you say.” She had welcomed the child and, after a dream, so did Joseph, the man to whom she had been promised in marriage.
But when they came to Bethlehem that night so long ago, there was no place for them to rest. Every inn was full. The humans could not make space for the travelers and the baby that was about to be born.
So the animals made room. Like Mary, they welcomed the gift that God was giving to the whole world. And the baby was born among cattle and birds in a stable. They lent their feeding trough to be the baby’s first crib.
“And on that first Christmas,” Possum said, “at midnight, when the baby was born, the cows knelt down.” I looked over at the cow who had come, and sure enough, she was kneeling. “And the donkeys knelt down.” Here the donkey knelt and I got off to stand next to him. “And the birds sang a song of praise to God.” The cardinal and the other birds began to sing. I think they were singing, “Joy to the World.”
“All the creatures began to speak. While they were talking and singing, a group of shepherds stumbled into the stable. They said, ‘We heard the news! We were out in the fields and we saw angels. We heard about a baby that was born to save the world…to bring peace on earth. And we ran all the way. Who ever heard of such a thing? A baby to bring hope once again! And we get to be witnesses!’
“Of course it was ridiculous. Shepherds as witnesses? Even their sheep know how unreliable those characters were. But the angels came to them to tell them what we already knew: that God who made the creatures with wings and the creatures with hooves…the God who made trees and mountains and marshes and bays…this God was now found in the flesh…in a baby…in a manger…in the arms of a young woman who looked in wonder at singing sheep and preaching possums. Oh, yes, we possums were there, too, hanging from the rafters.
“So we come here once more to tell the story. We who have always been what we were made to be, come to give witness to the good news God has for all the world, humans included…God has become human so that they can be what they were made to be, too…forgiven, loved and freed.” And it was hard to read his beady eyes but I believe as he said this he was looking right at me.”
Then all the creatures knelt and bowed in whatever way they could – (this was particularly difficult for the snake) – and they sang once more, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king.”
Later, as we were walking back to my Grandma’s house, I was riding on the donkey’s back again. “Why did you get me tonight? Why did I get to come?” I asked the donkey.
It was one of the chickens who answered. “Because you tried to talk to us. Every human who looks deeply enough at the world knows that there are things to learn in every corner of it. Even chickens know the glory of God. The world is full of the glory of God. But you humans seldom stop to see it. Or to ask a chicken where to find it.”
I grabbed hold of the donkey’s mane and held on tight because I was getting sleepy and didn’t want to fall off. I dozed off and on as we made our way back through the woods. By the time we got back to the pens, the animals were no longer speaking my language. The pigs grunted. The chickens clucked. The cardinal chirped. And the donkey brayed.
I slipped off the donkey’s back and headed back across the field to my Grandma’s house. I came quietly through the front room by the oil stove. I heard my sisters breathing softly in their sleep in the next room. I looked at the ceramic manger scene my grandma kept by the Christmas tree. I had never noticed the cow there before. Then I went off to bed. It had to be a dream, didn’t it?
To tell you the truth, when I woke up the next morning I forgot all about it. There was so much commotion and presents and flashbulbs going off. But it all came back to me over breakfast. No. It had to be a dream, didn’t it?
I threw on my jeans and my sweatshirt and my tennis shoes and ran down to the animal pens. There were the chickens clucking behind their fence. The pigs were in their pen rooting in the mud. And there was the donkey looking at me to see if I’d brought him a carrot.
Everything looked the same as it always did. The world was just the same as it always was. But then I looked at the donkey and you can say I’m crazy if you want to but I know that donkey winked at me. And when I walked past the chickens it sure sounded like they clucked in such a way that they were saying, “Jesus is born.” And when I walked back into my Grandma’s house, it sure seemed like it was heaven. Thanks be to God.
Luke 2:1-20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
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