Christmas with the Cousins

The Christmas season floods my mind with beautiful, innocent, and probably some naive memories. For me, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Every Christmas our family would pile into our station wagon and make our way to Grand Rapids for the Pierce family Christmas celebration. Even as a child, I knew this party was special. My cousins, along with their parents, would crowd into my grandparents’ single wide trailer in Cutler Estates. There was hardly room to breathe in there let alone move when the extended family gathered. 

I remember watching my grandma cook our Christmas dinner for 25 in a kitchen smaller than our laundry room. I remember the music, southern gospel Christmas no doubt, emanating from the tape player. I remember the 3 foot tall silver Christmas tree on the table, right next to the tattered King James Bible.

I remember the gifts I was given. They weren’t the fancy toys I received from my other grandparents, but they were special. One year I received a bag of nickels that my grandma had collected throughout the year. Many Christmases I received a knitted hat. In 1984 I received a Christmas ornament shaped as a sled that my grandpa carved from popsicle sticks. I know it was 1984 because the year is painted on the ornament that still sits on my desk today. I remember all of those things as though they were yesterday.

Most of all, I remember my family. My dear grandparents radiated a love that could not be contained. Even though they had so little, they were willing to give so much. They had become Christians later in life and were decidedly baptist, even if my grandpa would sneak a pipe smoke every now and then. If you look up “grandma” in the dictionary you should find a picture of my grandma. Her name was Dorothy after all.

I remember my cousins. There were so many of us. Most of them I would only see this one day of the year. And now that my grandparents are both gone, I haven’t seen many of them in decades. But I remember them.

We were and are a strange lot of cousins. We grew up to be rich and poor. We became pastors, professors, business owners, employees, bloggers, and lawyers. We got married, and some got divorced. We all had children of our own. Some have held onto their evangelical faith, while others of us have found new church homes or have left the church altogether. Some of us became addicted to alcohol and drugs. We are straight and we are gay. We have good lives, and we endure. For one that we lost, the struggles of life just became too much to bear.

I remember the homemade gifts, the smell of the ham, the thousand degree temperature of the trailer. I remember Bill Gaither singing in the background while the family reunited. But most of all I remember the faces of my family sitting around that small silver tree.

We had no way to know the twists and turns our lives would take. So much promise and so much pain. Angels We Have Heard on High turned to alcoholism, Hark, the Herald turned to heroin, and Silent Night turned into suicide. 

And yet right in the middle of the naive innocence, with all the twists and turns that were on the distant horizon, around that tree was Immanuel. God was with us.

I can’t imagine what Mary experienced that Christmas Eve. Life was not easy living under Roman occupation, having to move in the third trimester so that your occupier could get an accurate headcount.

And yet, Immanuel. God was with her. 

Maybe that’s the beauty of Christmas. Of course all isn’t calm or bright, but God is with us. From first century “stables” to 21st century singlewides; from a young woman who could not fathom the road ahead to a ragtag group of cousins blissfully unaware of what was to come, God is with us.

On this Christmas Eve, I add my voice to the chorus: O Come, O Come, Immanuel.