An Eyewitness Account

White Trash Rising has a five-star rating on Amazon. I've sold 35 books so far! A big thank you to everyone who has faith enough in my writing to buy a book! The Christmas tree is up, and it's time to start watching our favorite Christmas movies to help get into the spirit. I was thinking about the old black-and-white movies on TV continuously this time of year. This is also the time of year when parents lie to their children, Elf on the Shelf, Santa and the reindeer, all in the name of the magic of Christmas. But when it came to Christmas, Mom told me a whopper!

Nativity

Now that it was just Lilly and me, we did chores together more than ever. Evenings and weekends had always been our time together, but now, with the evaporation of one parent, Lilly had days when she tagged along behind my every step.

                We worked with numbers while measuring and baking, and with colors and counting while sorting laundry. Lilly was deep into watching Little House on the Prairie, as my sister had done with her children, and I pointed out that Mr. Edwards looked like Grandpa Reuben. Little House in the Prairie is relevant because I didn’t realize what Lilly was thinking while watching the episodes repeatedly.

                I dumped all the laundry onto the laundry room floor and would call out a color, and Lilly would bring me all the clothing of that color. She was happy to help, and I was happy to combine chores and learning. Feeling quite proud of myself as a parent, I tossed each item into the wash by color. Then my pride took a fall.

                “Did you do this with Grandma Pearl?”

                “I don’t remember doing this, but I bet I did. I always helped Grandma Pearl with chores when I was little.”  (Notice how I slipped in a part about me being a helpful child.)

                “I bet you had to help carry the clothes to the river so you could wash them just like Laura did.”

                How damn old did this kid think I was? I had been called a geriatric pregnancy, but this was getting insulting! Then I thought of Mom’s old wringer machine and tin tub behind the wringer for rinsing and realized we had not been too far away from washing clothes in the river.

                “Doing laundry was hard work when I was little,” I told her.

                Was it wrong? It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was hard work and painful if you got your hand stuck in the wringer. Besides, I remembered all the whoppers Mom told me about her life.

                Mom inserted herself into history. Watching old black and white movies together on the couch, Mom would yell,

                “Look, there I am! Off on the hill, in the toga. Oh, shoot, you missed it. Ah, I remember that day; it was something else. The sky got all dark and scared the shit out of all of us.”

                Of course, I always “just missed” Mom in each scene of the old movies. I suspected it was true because she always knew what would happen next. Sure enough, in the film, the sky would get dark, and the people would be frightened. Mom was always in the old black-and-white movies of historical events. The film itself looked old. It all made sense to a young, impressionable, and not too bright child like me. Watching TV with mom turned historical movies into documentaries.

                Watching a black-and-white movie from the 1930’s about the Nativity, I was fortunate to have a firsthand witness narrate the story. Sitting on the couch beside me, Mom gave me her version of the story, since she had witnessed it firsthand years before I was born.

                “That year, we all had to go to Bethlehem for the census. They didn’t have people coming around to our houses back then because we didn’t have cars. It was a mess; everyone having to pack up and go all the way to town right around Christmas time.”

                Watching the movie as Mom narrated, I could see the scene unfolding exactly as Mom remembered it.

                “We had so many kids in our family, we had to start walking early. Some of the rich people, like Joseph and Mary, had a mule. Of course, Mary was pregnant at the time, so she couldn’t do much walking. She shouldn’t have been going anywhere; she was so pregnant she was about to pop. Joseph had a good job, making furniture, so he could afford to get a mule, but he didn’t get that much business; he could only afford one for Mary. I can’t believe they made her go all that way to Bethlehem, but the Romans didn’t care; they wanted their census.”

                The movie had panned to show Joseph walking with a long staff and Mary sitting on a mule, looking exhausted. Off in the distance, I saw a large group walking in the same direction. I squinted, trying to see if I could pick out Mom. Between the identical clothing and scarves, it was hard to see which one was the young Mom.

                “The town was packed; everyone was there. Look, see, those people there? They were our neighbors.” Mom pointed out two cloaked figures on the TV.

“And it wasn’t even like the town was big enough for all those people. It was shoulder to shoulder when we got there. We had passed up Joseph and Mary on the trip, even with the mule; they had to go slow.”

                Mom was right, it was packed with people, and there was no way to pick Mom out from the rest of the crowd.

                “We got one room at the hotel. That’s all they had. One room for me, your grandma, and grandpa, and all of us kids. We were packed like sardines. People were coming from everywhere. People were living like rats in that town anyway before all of us had to show up. Then the shepherds started coming into town with all their damn sheep, noisy as all get out.”

                I watched the TV as the shepherds left their flocks. The sheep must have followed them, I assumed.

                “There was nowhere to eat, the restaurants were full, and they raised the prices anyway, so we couldn’t afford to eat out, not with the pack of kids that we were. Your Grandma packed lunches in our lunch pails, so we had sandwiches. Lard sandwiches, but it was something to eat.”

                I watched as Mary and Joseph were turned away at the Inn and directed to the stable. Mom continued giving me a witness account.

                “I was looking out the window and saw Mary and Joseph. They didn’t have any rooms left at the hotel, so they had to make do in the barn behind the hotel. At least it was warm, warmer than that drafty old hotel. No insulation anywhere; they could have at least put plastic on the windows. We about froze to death, I think we would have been better off in the barn with them.”

                Mom saw it all, even the three wise men riding their camels past the hotel as she looked out the window.

                “Of course, nobody could find a doctor, and poor Mary was gonna have that baby. It was coming out whether she wanted it to or not. Pretty soon, everybody was heading out to the barn. These three guys on camels rode right past me at the window. They didn’t stop to see if there were any rooms left at the hotel. They just headed to the barn. I don’t know where they came from. They had those poor camels loaded down with all kinds of stuff. It looked like they brought the whole damn house with them.”

                Mom explained it all to me as we watched the movie, a star shining brightly over the stable, and the infant asleep in the manger.

                “That star was so bright, nobody was gonna get any sleep that night. That star just hung there, over the barn. That was why everybody was going to the barn to see what was going on there. Can you imagine poor Mary having to have a baby in a pile of straw for a bed and then having all those strangers just coming in and watching?

  She told me it was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened when she thought about it later. Of course, at the time she was having the baby, she didn’t care who was hanging around. I hope one of them knew something about having a baby.

I didn’t get to see the baby; people were yelling and hollering like it was the first baby ever born. They were singing and dancing, and people all dressed up were running around, giving Mary presents for the baby. That’s why we get presents at Christmas. Jesus started all that when he was born. Every year we remember Jesus and give each other presents, just like God gave Mary and Joseph a baby.

I wanted to see the baby so bad. But your grandma told me there were too many people around the barn, and I would be smashed if I went down there. I saw the baby a couple of days later, though, right before they left town. Cute little bugger.”

                “And it was baby Jesus! You got to see baby Jesus when he was born!” I exclaimed.

                “Yeah, I was right there. It was something. Never saw so many people in my life. Then the Romans got mad, and they had to get out of town fast.”

                “Why?”

“Someone told them that a new king was born.”

“Baby Jesus,” I exclaimed.

“Yes, but see, Mary and Joseph had kept it a secret that the baby was really God’s son. Then somebody told the King that a new king was born, so he got really mad and said he was gonna kill all the baby boys.”

                I watched TV as people fled Bethlehem. This was scary.

                “We just all got the hell out of there. People were going crazy. We went all that way to get in the census and then had to turn around and go home.”

                “What about Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus?”  I knew they got out safely, but I needed the reassurance.

                “Oh, they got out just fine, went back home, and Joseph went back to work. They raised baby Jesus just like he was any other kid. We didn’t see much of them back then, though. It was a long hike to reach their place. Nothing much happened for years after all that excitement. But that’s why we get presents on Christmas. I was excited about it, you know, we didn’t get much as kids.”

                My four-year-old mind took it all in. Part of me strongly suspected that Mom was telling me a whopper. But the events unfolded just as she said they would. And she kept pointing herself out in the crowd. I decided to bask in the glory of having a mom who was an eyewitness to Jesus's birth, even if I doubted her story. Sometimes we all need to take a leap of faith.