Peace on Earth; Good Will to Men

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Christmas is upon us. It doesn’t look like the familiar event where families get together and celebrate the day with piles of presents and the spectacular results of hours in the kitchen. Many families are scaling down this year, with older family members isolated for their own safety. But when I think about Christmases past, I remember two days—neither of which was in December. For me, they are Christmas.

The first day happened many years ago. I was in ninth grade. My dad was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base on the shores of Lake Michigan. Early one Saturday morning in the spring, a young couple knocked at our door. They were newly married; he was beginning his four-year commitment to the Air Force in repayment for his medical school training. They had just moved into officer’s housing. Our Branch President had mentioned to them that we were members of their LDS faith, we only lived two blocks away, and more importantly, we owned a lawn mower. They stopped by to find out if they might borrow it to tame the unkept yard around their new home.

Mom was making waffles and invited them to breakfast. We loved them on sight. Almost 10 years younger than he, she was filled with energy, laughter, and unabashed joy. He was quieter, seriously competent, and as fierce a lover of knowledge my father. They were originally from Salt Lake, actually knew a couple of our relatives, and were very far from home. They stayed to lunch.

He and my dad headed to their house to inspect the yard. She and my mom made cookies for a Branch event; we played games, we shared stories, we talked about the books we loved. By the time they left, long after our bedtimes—which to our delight, our parents ignored,–we were family.

We were never stationed on the same base again. But when he gave his wife the gift of two summer semesters at BYU so she could finish her degree, I lived with her as nanny for their two sons. Late at night as my then-boyfriend got off his shift work as a welder, he’d throw rocks at my window to wake me so that we could spent a few minutes together. The noise interrupted her sleep; eventually she gave him a key.

My husband and I spent a few days with them on our honeymoon a year or so later. By then, our friend was a well-known radiologist in the California community where movie star Clint Eastwood was mayor. They sent us to dinner and a play in San Francisco as our wedding gift.

Our families circled one another over the years, but never missed an opportunity to share time together. Only my mother, who had long since passed away, would have been as proud as our friends and I were the day just two Aprils ago that their son was sustained a Seventy and spoke from the General Conference podium about the power of redemption.

The second day was an afternoon in June, I believe. My niece’s extended family owned a cabin in Park City and invited the women in my family to spend two days laughing, shopping, visiting, and avoiding the heaviness of being moms to a dozen or so of my young grandchildren. We had a glorious time, ate way too much, and reluctantly headed down the mountain on Saturday in the late afternoon.

I had a car full of daughters and daughters-in-law. We stopped at the house of Son #4 first. He had broken his foot the day before and was lying on the couch playing a silly game with a couple of four-year olds. My son-in-law was outside. He’d finished mowing the lawn and was trimming the edges. He knew Son #4 would not be able to do it for several weeks. Sons #s 3 and 5 were changing diapers for the four or five two-year-olds running wildly around the house. My husband and Son #6 were in the back yard bar-b-queuing hamburgers and hot dogs for the whole crowd. The men were laughing, telling bad “dad” jokes, teasing their own children and those of their brothers/brother-in-law. It was a chaotic, memorable scene: the very definition of “family”. The other women climbed out of the car to capture their children and admire the jobs their husbands and brothers had done. I sat alone in the driveway, watching. I don’t remember ever being more grateful for family than on that golden day.

Christmas is more than a baby born years ago in a small country in the Middle East. It’s the story of a man who saved his friends’ wedding celebration by turning water into wine; who taught fishermen where to spread their nets so they could “feed” their families and those of everyone who chose to listen. He raised the dead and healed the sick.  In the face of crushing opposition and vicious punishment, He preached generosity, forgiveness, and faith. With His own life, He opened the door so that families of “the blood and of the heart”–as my husband often says–could love and care for one another throughout eternity. There can be no greater path to “peace on earth, good will to men”.