To get to my grandmother's farm, you had to drive up a pretty substantial hill on a dirt road in southern Kentucky. Usually, we went in the summer months, so the dust from the road just hung in the air. We did go at Christmas one year. That was a disaster. My mother had ten brothers and sisters. Someone thought it would be wonderful for all eleven siblings and their families to get together at Granny's. Everyone was gung-ho, except Granny. Two of my mother's brothers lived in the same county, so the people were able to not be all crammed in, but it was still a lot of people. Granny hung in there, though. She made Christmas dinner on, and in, her old wood burning stove.

    But this isn't about that awful Christmas. This is about a discovery I made one hot summer evening on the back porch.

    First, my grandmother's house was old. Not like fifty years or even a hundred years. My mother's family had owned that farm since the 1700s. I don't think the house was that old, but it was old. There was electricity, but the wiring was in conduits that ran along the walls rather than inside the walls. The running water consisted of a hand pump in the kitchen sink. And, of course, the outhouse. This was a nice outhouse. A four holer. You had to walk a long way to get to it because you usually tried to situate those things well away from the house. A couple of old barns and several sheds. A big corn crib. And in the house was a big fireplace. Having always lived in northeast Ohio, an evening in the summer where the temp dropped to 70 was comfortable. In southern Kentucky, such an evening was considered cold. So, even in the summer, there would be the occasional fire laid in. 

    I do like a fire, but I preferred a fire on a night when it was about 10 degrees outside and the wind was howling. Those summer fires would be too hot for me, so it was out to the front porch with my sisters and three girl cousins who my grandmother was raising. But a little boy sitting around with five girls...yuck! After a little bit of that I would just start wandering around the house in the dark, checking things out. On the night in question, I wound up sitting on the back porch with the big old blue tick (That's a type of dog. I just realized how that sounded.) my grandmother owned. Looking out at the low mountain that was off in the distance, I saw a red light flashing slowly off and on. It was higher than the mountain by a little bit and I could not figure out what that light was, so I asked the dog. He looked at me like, "How would I know?" No help there. So, I wondered and I wondered. I was thinking I should get an adult when Bobbi (cousin Roberta) walked around the house. Bobbi lived there and she was almost an adult. If I was six then she was ten, so I asked her.

    "Bobbi, what's that red thing up in the sky?"

    She looked up and around and said, "What red thing?" Dumb girl. 

    "Over there," and I pointed. 

    "That light over yonder? That's the light on top of the radio tower to warn planes away so they won't fly into the tower." Maybe she wasn't so dumb after all.

    After that she told me I needed to get in out of the cold so I wouldn't catch my death, and I refused. She went away, taking the dog with her. I was left to sit there watching that light pulse. A radio tower! That was so neat!

    I had seen an old movie on TV where there was some sort of disaster coming. In the newsroom of the radio station all these people were rushing around to get the news out. Men wearing shirts and ties with their shirt sleeves rolled up with papers clutched in their hands. Women in long dresses and high heels and a string of pearls around their necks typing furiously to generate the papers the men carried. Now as I watched that lazy pulse of a light, I couldn't figure why Bobbi wasn't more interested. Amazing things could be happening!

    Now, well, now I have been in those newsrooms. It is vastly different. No one is too impressed with anything. It is a job. No excitement, no concern. Been there, done that...ho-hum. Important things happen, sure, but they are still going to eat supper that night and maybe catch the game on TV. They are cynical, I am cynical, we all have grown cynical. We are not six year old kids on a back porch any more with our minds all awhirl as we gaze heavenward. It has all become to regular, to common. The wonder is gone. We have grown up.

    And the loss of that wonder is a shame. We have trained our minds to dismiss the amazing. It takes so much more than it used to in order to ignite our imagination.

    A young couple, dusty and tired from days of travel, coming into a small town, crammed with dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds and hundreds, of people. And that couple finding shelter where no human should live and in that place delivering the Child that would offer Himself to save any and all who would believe. Yes, it is an old story. We have heard it over and over, again and again. And we need something more to give us the feeling of Christmas.

    Someone asked me the other day if I was going to slip away and go to Ohio over the Christmas holiday to see the granddaughter. No. As far as time to go on a trip, Christmas is not good. It will mean as much next March or April. The only child I need to hold to feel the wonder of Christmas is the Child I hold in my heart. Please, don't lose that bit of wonder.