It was the perfect Christmas. All I really wanted was a dog. A big dog. A dog you could go into the woods with or wrestle with out in the yard. Oh, we had always had dogs. My father’s favorite pastime was coon hunting. He raised his own and also trained dogs for other hunters. I interacted with as many as a dozen dogs a day, depending on how many were chained up out back to dog houses at the time due to training. Since I was the one who brought them food and water, they were always happy to see me. And when I was a very little boy, we had a pet dog named Tiger. He was a little yappy dog that was a family pet. We all loved the little mutt. When he died we were all heartbroken. But he was ours, not mine. Now, I was in sixth grade and I wanted my own dog.

          So, on Christmas morning, there he was. Already big, he was only half grown. A big, happy cur pup. He zeroed in on me and was all over me. We wrestled in the living room, rolled into the dining room and then back into the living room. I took off upstairs to my room to get something and the big goof raced up the steps with me. We wrestled in the hallway, into my sister’s room, back into the hallway and then into my room. Finally, we trooped downstairs and ate breakfast. Then boots, heavy coat, gloves and knit cap, and the dog and I were ready for our first tramp in the woods. My father tossed me a leash and told me that he was still a pup. He needed to learn who was boss. Keep him on a leash for now. Yeah, yeah, OK. I clipped the leash on and as I walked out the door, I grabbed my gun. “Hey, boy!” (My father never called me by name until I was an adult.) “There’s no open season right now.” “Just for protection!” And then we raced out the door. Who knew? Maybe I would have to protect myself against a gang of killer squirrels.

          As soon as we hit the woods, I unleashed the dog. Boom, he was gone. I called for him and called for him, but to no avail. So I tracked him in the snow. After a half hour of that he showed up again, having circled around and coming up behind me. I sat down on a log and took his face in my hands and explained that he had to stick with me until I told him he could go. It was about a five minute lecture and he sat there, his head in my hands and listened to me with the intensity of a young scholar in college drawing knowledge from his professor. When I had finally made my point, I released his head and he turned and bolted through the woods again. Out of sight in seconds. I was eleven years old and disappointed. What does an eleven year old boy who is disappointed and sitting on a log in the woods in the snow with a gun do? Well, he target practices. I couldn’t do that, because it would be a waste of bullets and my father would not be happy. But so what? I spotted a tree some distance away, picked a point on the tree and started banging away. I was breaking all sorts of rules. I had taken my gun for no good reason, I had unleashed the dog, I was wasting bullets, I was shooting a tree (which was a real no-no) and I was shooting at an up angle. We did target practice some, but there was either a hill we were shooting into or we were shooting down. You didn’t shoot up with no backstop. Even a .22 can carry for a mile. But I didn’t care about any of that at the moment. I was an angry boy with a gun and I thought I knew all the answers.

          To my surprise, the shooting brought the dog back. He was extremely interested in the noise. I had a couple of rounds left and as I fired them off I watched the dog. Just a slight, tiny little jerk each time the gun fired. Well, there was hope for the dog yet. Certainly not gun shy. I quickly clipped the leash and headed back toward the house.

          The dog had burned off a lot of energy, so he was content to walk on the leash. As we walked along, I tried to concoct a story to explain my actions. If I hadn’t decided to go to war with that tree and hadn’t fired a single shot, I would be golden. But I had and my father would have heard. Telling the whole story would be disastrous. I know I was thinking pretty hard as we got to the yard.

          We had at least two dozen barn cats. That number went up and down with litters and cats trying to cross the road and all. But as a rule, we had around two dozen. My father didn’t like cats, but he put up with them because they had a purpose around the barns. We were pretty much rodent free. He didn’t even let us name them. (They all had names, of course. I have two sisters.) There was, however, one cat he was quite partial too. On his way out every morning he would feed the little creature and stand there to keep the others away. Suzy-Q. None of the other cats liked her because she got special treatment. If my father was sitting in a lawn chair in the back yard, Suzy-Q was in his lap. No other cats would be around for fear of the man, but Suzy-Q had her place.

          All of a sudden the dog bolted, pulling the leash from my hand. He had spotted Suzy-Q. He was new to the neighborhood, just there since that morning. He had no idea of the cat’s place in the order of things. He just knew that he hated cats. Between Suzy-Q’s screaming and the dog’s barking and growling and my yelling, there was quite a commotion. My father burst through the backdoor and took it all in. He leaped over an embankment that ran along the backdoor to where I stood yelling at the dog. The cat was already in the dog’s mouth and, probably, dead. But my father grabbed my gun and raised it and pulled the trigger. Of course, it was empty. He reversed it, grabbing the barrel, and started beating the dog until the gun broke in half at the point of the chamber. My father was a drinker, to put it lightly, and I had seen violence in him before, but never with this intensity. And, just like that, on a cold Christmas morning, my father lost his cat and I lost my dog and my gun. The fresh snow was a deep red. The perfect Christmas was no more.

          My father taught me many lessons. Most of them were lessons on how not to act, how not to treat people and animals. How not to treat your kids, your son. He also taught me to not like Christmas. The drinking increased starting just after Thanksgiving and escalated all the way through February. Every year, just after Christmas, he would leave for some other woman and would be gone till it was time to get ready to plant. And my mother would let him come home. I never really understood. But many kids grow up that way.

          I have two older sisters. By Christmas my senior year in high school they were both married. The oldest, Cathy, had a baby boy. The next, Debbie, was pregnant. They had their own places and their own lives that Christmas. A couple of years earlier the farm had failed. Even though the failure was due to my father’s drinking, he saw no reason to stop. My mother’s life was miserable and I was not helping, I suppose. A month before I had stepped in to protect my mother, something I hadn’t done before, and I had hurt my father pretty bad. I had accepted Christ the previous summer and I had a hard time dealing with fighting with my father and hurting him. I protected my mother, so that was reason enough to stop him. But I had felt a surge of anger and even hate that I didn’t know had existed. If my mother hadn’t stopped me, I really don’t know what I would have done. He left that night and this Christmas he was not home. I was wrapped in my own guilt and shame. It was going to be the worst Christmas ever.

          Morning came. I woke around 5 AM. Not for the anticipation of gifts. I just wake up at 5 AM. My bed was next to the window. I rolled over and gazed outside. So much on my mind. I wanted to go to college next Fall. But how? I was being recruited for football, so that was my way, but I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. There were lots of jobs to be had, I didn’t have to go to college. The great bust hadn’t hit yet. That is the area of Ohio/Pennsylvania now mockingly called the Rust Belt. Then it was called the Steel Belt. All kinds of jobs. We didn’t know that in a few years they would start leaving. But I was conflicted about a lot of things that Christmas morning. Guilt, confusion, responsibility. As a new Christian I had no real understanding of giving it all over to Him.

          However, looking out that window at a landscape covered in snow, the Lord put into my mind the words I had just heard two days earlier in Church. Surely my eyes were playing tricks, or was it just my imagination? I saw a hillside covered in grass where there had just been a hillside covered in snow. I saw men sitting on the hill and flocks settling down around them. A light from a fire sprang up and I felt strangely peaceful. Then a light surrounded them. A voice! An angel! Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  Amazing really. In my mind the angel spoke in King James English, just like I had heard in church. Anyway, the men leaped up and raced down the hill toward the town. Then, in my imagination, my perspective changed. I was looking down on a small barn. Oddly, the barn looked just like the barn that really was outside my window, except that the snow covered lane was a dusty dirt road and there were buildings and shops there in my mind. The shepherds slid the big door open (Well, the actual barn had a sliding door. How was I supposed to know that they probably had swinging doors?) They raced in and then my perspective changed once more. I was inside the barn, upstairs where baskets and small equipment usually clutter the place. But now, in my imagination, there was loose hay. I was looking down upon a scene that was amazing. A man and a woman and a Baby. Usually, in that barn, there was a tractor and a plow and a disk, but now it was just the man and the woman and the Baby, and then the shepherds.

          My mother called to me and asked me if I was awake. Coffee was on. I called back and told her I would be down in a minute. I tried to recapture the moment, but outside it was just snow and cold. Inside though, in my head, it really was Christmas. The. Best. Christmas. Ever.

          I know. You doubt it was really like that. But for the first time in my life I was looking at the holiday with hope that had nothing to do with gifts. The Lord was new in me and it was incredible. Believe me, it was like that.

          Blessings to you all during this season.