Impossible! That is what my mother said about the upcoming Christmas family reunion. It was our turn to host. “How can I fit over 50 people into this house?”
In my bedroom, I looked up from reading about Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio. There wasn’t a conversation that went on without the whole house hearing. The place was tiny. It looked like a dollhouse beside our big barn. I tried to count up the family members who would be coming.
There was Mom, Dad, me and my little sister, Rosalie. Mom’s six brothers and sisters. Their children—one of my uncles had 11 kids, another had 9. Some of them had children of their own. I didn’t have to do the math to know Mom was right. They’d never fit in this house.
I turned the page of my comic and stared in shock at an ad showing that scandalous new bathing suit: a bikini! Then Mom’s voice came again from the kitchen. “We can’t afford a rental hall,” she said.
“I’ll come up with something,” said Dad. That was his standard response to everything. But he didn’t sound too sure of himself this time.
A couple of days later Dad came up with his solution. “There’s plenty of room in the barn,” he told Mom after dinner.
“The barn?” Mom said.
Even I had to gasp. I loved our big barn. It was great for playing hide-and-seek or reading. Dad had hung a rope from the ceiling so we could swing from the hay bales. When I hit the highest point of my swing, I swear I could see all the way to France out the barn windows!
But swinging was one thing, Christmas dinner was another. Would we eat with the chickens? Sit in the cow stalls? Have Christmas in a barn?
“We’ll borrow the church’s folding tables and chairs for the adults,” Dad said. “The kids can sit on the hay bales. I’ll move the tractor and corn-sheller outside for more space.”
“Just make sure everyone knows it wasn’t my idea!” Mom said. Then she thought of something. “It could be freezing on Christmas Eve. How will we heat the fine venue?”
“I’ll come up with something.”
I couldn’t help but root for Dad to find a solution.
Days passed. Then one afternoon, out of the blue, Dad found the answer. “Remember that old wood stove you wanted to be rid of?”
“The one you insisted on storing in the cellar,” said Mom.
“We’ll put it in the barn,” Dad said. “The almanac says we’re due for a mild Christmas. We’ll be fine.”
Mom marked the days till the reunion on the Purina-Feed calendar. Over the coming weeks, we got the barn into shape. Mom broom-brushed the cobwebbed walls. Rosalie and I swept hay and dust off the concrete floor. Dad “neated-up” the cow stalls.
Some farmer neighbors helped Dad carry the stove to the barn, stick its exhaust pipe through a window and stock firewood by its side.
A few days before Christmas, we unfolded the church tables and chairs, spread a festive tablecloth, laid all the places. Dad lit the wood stove to see how it worked. It didn’t take long for the drafty barn to feel warm and cozy.
What’s more, the front of the stove had a little window made of isinglass. I could see the fire glowing from inside it, casting a warm, beautiful glow. It was like having a fireplace right there in the barn.
“We’re ready,” Mom said. Even she had faith in Dad’s plan now.
The next day a wicked north wind roared across the Kansas plains, whipping up snow everywhere. Highway 50’s black-licorice asphalt turned white. Black ice crusted the road. Icicles hung from the phone lines and sparkled in the cornfields.
“What if nobody comes?” I asked Mom. I no longer felt embarrassed about our Christmas barn dinner.
“Angels sang at Jesus’ first birthday,” said Dad. “They’ll come to this one and pave the way for our guests.”
I couldn’t help thinking that if we were just entertaining angels for Christmas, they could have fit in our tiny little house. But Dad was right. By the time the rooster crowed on the day of the reunion, the sky had cleared.
We were just finishing breakfast when a noise like a coffee grinder split the early morning silence. It was a truck, slip-sliding its way up the lane to our house. My uncle Elmer popped his head out. “Betcha thought we wouldn’t make it clear from Wichita!” he called.
Aunt Sadie climbed out. “Where do I put the fried chicken?”
We led the way into the barn, followed by Uncle Elmer, Aunt Sadie and the eight kids they’d crammed into the backseat. “Neat!” they said when they saw our pot-bellied stove.
Pickup trucks arrived all day, with more relatives and more food. I ran from the house to the barn, eagerly listening to everyone catching up. “I put up a hundred quarts of tomatoes this year,” Aunt Minnie told the other women in the kitchen. “Heard the Millers got thirty bushels per acre,”
Uncle Jack was saying to the men by the corral fence. “Isabel, come and play hide-and-seek!” my cousins called from the haymow.
At dinnertime Mom clanged the cowbell hanging from its strap by the haymow ladder. “Come and get it!”
We took our places on folding chairs and hay bales. Grandpa read the twenty-third Psalm from the Bible and led us in a blessing.
We ate, talked and laughed for so long, the cows started bawling to come in for milking. Dad opened the door and in they came, snorting steaming clouds of air all the way to their stalls.
I’d thought a barn was a strange place for Christmas dinner, but all this time later it remains my favorite setting. Because that year we had everything Jesus did on the first Christmas. We had family, hay, farm animals—and, of course, angels.
