Christmas Miracles (5 page)

And then the robed being was coming toward his house. Emil felt his heart quicken. When he was a boy, he had heard his grandmother speak of having seen a robed figure enter a neighbor's house the very night that the man died. She had always believed that she had witnessed the Angel of Death come to take the old man home to the other side.

When he heard the feeble knocking, Emil hesitated for a few moments before he answered the door. But he had never been afraid of man nor beast, so he wasn't about to start now.

He swung open the door and was astonished to recognize the older son of his neighbors.

“Mr. Gunderson, please,” the boy was saying. “I'm freezing to death. May I please come in? Just for a little while?”

He stepped aside, asking the boy his name and wanting to know why he was dressed up like somebody from the Bible.

“I'm Marlin, Mr. Gunderson. And I'm one of the kings of the Orient, you know, one of the wise men who followed the star and brought gifts to the Baby Jesus in his manger,” the boy exclaimed, all in a rush. “And I've got to get to the Sunday school pageant. Our car wouldn't start, so I have to walk. I'm going to be late.”

Emil shook his head in silent appreciation of the kid's spunk and determination. “You're half frozen to death, boy.”

Marlin nodded agreement. “Just please let me warm up for a minute, then I've got to be getting going. I'm going to be late.”

“You're only halfway there, Marlin,” Emil said. “You'll be a walking icicle if you try to walk there tonight in this below-zero cold. If it means that much to you, I'll take you there. Let me get the keys to my pickup.”

At first the boy protested gamely, but he soon converted his objections to offering profuse thanks. Emil stopped by his bathroom to rinse with mouthwash to cover the beer breath.

Within a few minutes, he was dropping Marlin at the side door of the church where the young actors and singers of the evening's pageant were to enter.

“Won't you please come in and see our pageant, Mr. Gunderson?” the boy asked.

Emil grumbled something about having other plans, but almost as if another force was guiding him, he found himself parking in the church lot and finding a place in one of the back pews. He tried to ignore the heads that were turning to look at him, but when he glanced up from the program an usher had handed him, he saw that there were only warm smiles of welcome.

By the time that the Sunday school program had begun, several friends had stopped by his pew to wish him a Merry Christmas. And when Marlin and the two other boys stood up to sing “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” it was as if he had been transported to another Christmas far back in time, when he was thirteen and he, Max Olson, and Dick Larson had impersonated the three wise men and had sung that very same song. In fact, he and Marlin had even had the same solo part and had probably even walked to the manger with the same old “incense burner” from the Sunday school prop department, the domed pot that symbolically held the frankincense brought by the travelers from afar.

With a soft chuckle prompted by his nostalgia, Emil recalled fondly how after each Sunday school pageant, the church deacons would hand out bags of hard candy and peanuts to each of the participants in the performance and to all the kids in the audience. How exciting it was to open those bags and look to see if yours contained a small toy, such as a tin whistle, a miniature Santa, or a decoration that you could put on your Christmas tree at home.

As he allowed the music and memories to carry him back to earlier, happier Christmas times, he saw himself no longer as a thirteen-year-old, but as a high school student, listening with open adoration as Rachel, the girl he would one day marry, sang a solo rendition of “Come, O Come Immanuel” for her part in the Sunday school pageant.

And then he moved ahead in time to another Christmas, when Rachel and he sat with pride as their daughter Connie stood before the altar with the other ten-year-olds and sang, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Soon tears were streaming down his cheeks, and since he hadn't brought a handkerchief, he had to get up and walk out of the church to get a tissue from the men's room in the basement. He had seen Marlin's father squeeze into a back pew just a few minutes before the three wise men sang, so he guessed he finally got the car started and Marlin would have a ride home.

Emil Gunderson sat in his pickup in the parking lot for several minutes before he turned the key, started the motor, and headed for home. He would call his sisters and his brothers in Washington state that next day and wish them a Merry Christmas. And he would discuss plans to visit them that spring before fieldwork started.

A thirteen-year-old boy in his Sunday school costume of kingly robes and turban, half-frozen in the December cold as he tried to walk to the church pageant, had rekindled the warm glow of Christmas in a heart that had forsaken the mystery of the season and exchanged it for the misery of a grief that had been nurtured for far too long. Just as the Christmas story tells of three wise men from afar who brought gifts to the newborn Prince of Peace, so did a little “wise man” prompt a gift of renewal to a reborn soul.

E
unice York from Tulsa, Oklahoma, remembered that on her husband Sam's last birthday before he passed away, he had received two elaborately decorated cakes—one from his family, the other from a fraternal organization in which the Yorks were active. Even at sixty-two, Sam had retained a childlike enthusiasm for birthdays and holidays—especially Christmas and Halloween— and he had been moved to receive two birthday cakes, both delivered on September 29 to their door.

Eunice's birthday fell on December 26, and because she had come from a large family that had never had any extra cash for the observation of two special days in a row, she had been accustomed since childhood to having her birthday passed over without notice. Maybe a birthday card. Perhaps a present of stockings or a handkerchief. But never a decorated cake with candles and a personalized greeting written on the frosting.

Of course, the situation had changed after her marriage to the gregarious and fun-loving Sam, but on his last birthday she teased him about his having received two extravagantly large birthday cakes when she had gone so many years without having been given any cakes at all.

“Well, then, by golly, Miss Eunice,” Sam laughed. “This year I'll see to it that you receive two big special cakes on your birthday, too.”

Eunice appreciated his good-natured thought, but she only shook her head and replied: “Your head will be so full of Christmas, like it is every year, that you will forget all about my receiving even one cake.”

Sam placed one hand on his chest and raised the other as if he were in court, taking an oath. “Cross my heart,” he said with great solemnity. “You shall have two birthdays this year or my name isn't Samuel B. York.”

Eunice would be eternally grateful that Sam had not sealed his vow by saying, “Cross my heart and hope to die,” because her beloved husband died of a sudden heart attack one week later.

“It would have been unbearable to consider for even one fleeting moment that such a wish, regardless of how silly its intent, may have had anything to do with Sam's sudden death,” Eunice said.

Sam York's unplanned and rapid departure from his well-ordered life would seem to have freed him from all earthly promises and commitments. However, according to Eunice, this was not at all the case.

On her birthday, over two months later, Eunice York sat alone, feeling sad and depressed. Their only son had been killed in Vietnam. None of her family lived near, and the people they knew in Tulsa were mostly Sam's friends and acquaintances and none of them knew it was her birthday. Of course there were a few close lady friends with whom she occasionally went shopping or played cards, but since her birthday fell the day after Christmas, she had chosen not to bother any of them about an additional celebration—and expense—during the holidays.

With Sam in his grave for nearly three months, there seemed nothing for her to do other than spend a night in solitary misery.

But amazingly, on that cold and icy night, a friend, Lorna, traveled across the city by bus to deliver a cake and a carton of ice cream to Eunice so they might celebrate her birthday.

“How . . . how did you know?” Eunice asked, unable to take her eyes from the sumptuous cake with candles, a floral design, and a personal greeting spelled out in frosting on its sides.

“I don't know if you'll believe this or not,” Lorna began, a nervous smile on her lips. “I had just gotten home from work when it seemed as though I could hear Sam talking to me as if he were standing right there in the room with me. He told me that it was your birthday and that I should hurry out and buy you a cake with all the trimmings!”

Eunice was stunned by her friend's straightforward explanation of her birthday treat, but she didn't feel like interrogating her any further. After all, it was Christmas, a time of miracles. And if anyone could come back from the other side to see that she received a cake on her birthday, it would be her beloved husband.

Eunice and Lorna had no sooner finished a good-sized portion of cake and ice cream when Anita, the young woman who had been boarding with Eunice since Sam's death, entered the front door and walked back to the kitchen carrying a box that contained a beautifully decorated birthday cake.

Eunice shook her head in astonishment. “Anita, how did you know it was my birthday?”

Anita smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I was just walking by the bakery, and I saw this magnificent birthday cake in the window . . . and I just felt like buying it for you. I didn't even know it was your birthday. I guess . . . I just thought I should buy it for you.”

Eunice was certain that she had not mentioned the fact that it was her birthday to Anita, and the young boarder had never known Sam. “My husband kept his promise,” Eunice York said. “Somehow, through the miracle of Christmas, he saw to it that I received two special cakes for my birthday.”

D
uring every Christmas season since he was a young adult, Bob Shortz of Dallas, Pennsylvania, has volunteered to work in some aspect of human services to provide for the needy and the homeless. For Shortz, the true meaning and magic of the holiday began on Christmas Eve 1958, when he was eight years old.

“My twin brother, Ned, and I were in the living room with our father, who was relaxing in his favorite easy chair after setting up the Christmas tree,” Bob said. “It was our family custom to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and my brother and I were in a hurry to get started—but Dad said he wanted a chance to sit down and rest a bit.”

The twin boys could not imagine how anyone would want to sit down and relax on such an exciting night. Grown-ups were so unfathomable!

As the boys paced the room, waiting for their mother and older sister, Wendy, to join them, Bob remembered that he began to quiz his father regarding a very important matter about which he had been quite concerned but had been afraid to confront. “Daddy,” he asked, “how can Santa come down the chimney? Wouldn't he just end up in the coal bin?”

Bob knew that the chimney was connected to the furnace, because one of his chores around the house was to keep the “worm,” a metal corkscrewlike device, covered with lumps of coal so it could draw fresh coal from the bin into the furnace.

His father acknowledged that that could be a problem for an ordinary person, but Santa was magic.

“You mean, the furnace can't burn him?” Bob persisted. “How does he get back out of the chimney?”

His father's voice rose just a bit impatiently. “I told you, Bob. Santa is magic. He can come down in the chimney just as far as he wants and then come out. Because of his magic powers, the chimney becomes an elevator. He can get out in the kitchen and eat the snack we'll leave for him. He can stop out in Wendy's room—or wherever he wants.”