by Irene Brand
With a shrewd glance from Sean to Les, Allen said, “Except for gifts and such, I don’t know much about celebrating Christmas. However, I’ve learned a lot about human nature in my thirty-five years. If we sit around worrying about being cold, needing a bath, and being afraid we’ll run out of food and fuel, we’re going to get on each other’s nerves. We’d better do something.”
Since Eric was the only minister among them, all eyes turned to him. He stood and walked around the room. The others watched him, waiting for his decision. He lifted the lid of the upright piano and ran his fingers over the keys. Roxanne shuddered. Livia was amused that the out-of-tune piano grated on the pianist’s nerves.
Eric stared at the stained-glass window. He stood behind the lectern, his hands on the dusty top.
“Until we’re faced with a situation like this,” he began, “we often forget the real meaning of Christmas and why we observe it.” With a lopsided grin, he continued, “Standing in this pulpit brings out the preacher in me. I’m sure all of you know that the Bible doesn’t say anything about celebrating the birth of Jesus. It’s not His birth, but His death, burial and resurrection that holds the key to our salvation. We need to keep that truth foremost in our minds.”
A strong blast of wind rattled the window frames. Sitting beside Sean, Livia felt him shiver.
“It was the fourth century before Christians started observing His birth, which coincided with a Roman pagan holiday, the Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice. The exact date of the birth of Christ is uncertain, but by the Middle Ages, the twenty-fifth of December was generally accepted as Christmas Day.”
“As I remember from Sunday school,” Livia said, “early observances consisted mostly of feasting and merrymaking, a lot like the way people celebrate today.”
Eric nodded. “At first, a few churches honored the nativity for one day. But during the Middle Ages, celebrations expanded to a week or two. During the Protestant Reformation, in the sixteenth century, Christmas had become a day of reveling more than a time of worship. The celebration was outlawed by many religious sects.”
“That includes the Pilgrims and Puritans,” Quinn added. “They didn’t observe Christmas, but other Europeans brought the worship of Christmas to our shores. Since the Bible doesn’t specifically tell us when and where, or even if we should observe the birth of Jesus, we can worship here as well as if we were in our own church buildings.”
“As I said earlier,” Eric continued, “I personally feel that God brought us together in this place for some specific reason. We can each observe the holiday in our own way, or we can join together in a unique experience that will bring us closer to the real meaning of Christmas and to each other. Are you with me?”
Everyone applauded, and Sean said, “How do we start?”
“I want to have a tree,” Allen said. “I’ve always decorated the tree with my kids. As soon as it’s light enough, I’ll check outside and see if I can find anything that will serve as a tree.”
“No reason you can’t cut some branches off the evergreens in the cemetery,” Les said. “We have to trim the trees every few years anyway.”
“I’ve got a sewing kit in the van,” Roxanne said. “If you’ve got any bags of popcorn in the truck, we can string that into a garland.”
“I know there are some cranberries you can string with the corn,” Allen said.
“Let’s draw names like we did in elementary school,” Livia said. “Surely, we can sort through our belongings and come up with eight gifts, even if some of the things are used. Maybe we can use whatever talents we have to give gifts that will help us remember this experience with fondness.”
“I’m for that,” Allen said. “I’m trying to deal with this situation positively. But I feel like an outsider. Five of you are friends. Les and I are kinda separated from the rest of you. I’m trying not to think of the negative things, like the damage to the truck and missing my family. But it’s hard.”
Eric stepped to Allen’s side and put a brotherly arm around his broad shoulders. “My friend, we’re all in this together. Don’t feel shut out. Fortunately, I have my wife and mother-in-law with me. But I’m concerned about my parents, who’ll be very worried about us. We know we’re all right, but they don’t. In many ways, they’re going to have a worse holiday than we will. I’ve been praying that God will give our families peace of mind.”
It seemed odd to see tears appear in Allen’s eyes. His appearance suggested that he was the rugged he-man type, who wouldn’t be daunted by any situation.
“Buddy,” Les said, “I’m alone, too, but somehow when I’m in this old church, I feel a kinship with my loved ones who worshiped here, but who’ve gone on to a better place.”
Perhaps considering that the conversation could turn negative, Eric said, “Shall we plan our worship service to end at midnight?”
“Good idea. We want to stay up as long as we can,” Les agreed. “If we’re movin’ around, we won’t feel the cold as much.”
“While we’ve been talking,” Quinn said, “I heard a helicopter flying over. It’s probably the National Guard looked for stranded vehicles. We may have been spotted already. When we go out, we can clean the snow off the side of the church van, so the name can be seen by searchers. I’ve also been praying that God will reassure our families.”
“I’m for making gifts for one another,” Sean said. “I’ve got something in mind, but I doubt I can get it finished today. Let’s wait until tomorrow morning to open our presents.”
“I have some gifts in the truck I was taking home with me,” Quinn said. “Under the circumstances, my family won’t mind if I share them with you. If anyone can’t think of a gift, you’re welcome to anything I have.”
“Don’t forget to look for things in the supply room,” Les said. “There might be something left from years gone by to make gifts or Christmas decorations. We used to have big Christmas programs here.”
“Eric, while you plan a message,” Roxanne said, “I’ll see if I can get any music out of the piano. If not, we’ll sing a capella.”
“You might try the organ,” Les suggested.
“I’ve already checked out the organ,” Roxanne said with a laugh. “It’s a pump organ. I’ve never tried to play one of them.”
“No time like the present,” Les said, as he picked up the fuel buckets and headed for the back door.
Roxanne sat on the circular organ stool, lifted the covering over the keys, and pulled out several of the regulating stops above the keyboard. Livia heard her giggling as she pumped up and down on the squeaking pedals, but her fingers picked out a melody that Livia recognized as “Silent Night.”
“My boots keep sliding on these pedals. And if I forget to pump, I don’t get any music,” Roxanne said. “No wonder the pioneers were so hardy. This organ would make an excellent leg exerciser. But I think I’d better use the piano for tonight’s service, even if it’s not in tune.”
“Mom,” Marie said, “you know you can get music out of a washboard. It’ll sound great.”
And although the piano did sound out of tune to an experienced ear, in a short time, the strains of traditional Christmas music sounded through the room. Sean stood beside the piano, and he and Roxanne started singing the lyrics. The music lent a sense of gaiety to the stranded travelers, who went about their tasks humming or singing with them.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh,” Livia sang as she rummaged in her purse for paper and pen.
Quinn came to the front pew and sat beside her. “Too bad we don’t have a sleigh and the horse. We could get out of our predicament a little easier.”
“We have a sleigh and plenty of horses on Heritage Farm,” Livia said, finding it didn’t hurt as much to talk about home when Quinn was beside her. “In fact, three years ago when my brother, Evan, brought his girlfriend, Wendy, home for a visit, they went to the Christmas Eve service in a
sleigh that belonged to my grandfather. Evan and Wendy got married the following spring, and they have a little boy now.”
“Someone to carry on the Kessler name then. I remember you told me about the family traditions when we met.”
Livia’s face flushed, and she recalled again the acute humiliation she’d lived with for years. It was time for her to stop dwelling on the negative. She must think about the good things of their past relationship rather than that last, embarrassing day.
“We’ve already learned that Derek has a mind of his own,” she said. “He’s a very strong-willed child, and he may start new family traditions, rather than carry on the old.”
“Hey, Quinn,” Les said when he came back with the fuel, “that extra blizzard last night brought six more inches of snow. Time to start shoveling.”
Quinn groaned under his breath. “Les is a hard task-master. If he’d wait until the wind stops, we wouldn’t have so much shoveling to do. And he shouldn’t be shoveling snow at his age, but…to keep peace in our gathered family, I’ll do what he says.” He touched her shoulder, saying, “Keep your chin up.”
The touch of his hand sent a ripple of excitement through her body.
Livia cut eight strips of paper from her notebook and wrote the names of each of the travelers on one. What if she should get Quinn’s name? For the past three years, she’d often seen gifts that she would have liked to buy for him, when shopping for friends and family.
She folded the slips of paper and dropped them into an offering tray that she found inside the lectern. She mixed the names and passed them around, then took the last paper. It was Sean’s name, and she didn’t know whether she was pleased or not. She would have liked an excuse to give Quinn a gift, but Sean would be more appreciative of the wool scarf she’d been knitting for her brother.
By noon, the sun was shining. The reflection on the snow was blinding, and no one dared go outside without sunglasses. Livia put hers on and stepped out on the little porch, enjoying a good look at their surroundings.
Quinn and Allen had finally persuaded Les to leave the shoveling to them, and they’d cleared an area around the front steps, as well as the area in the back where the woodshed and necessaries were located.
The landscape was awesome. Livia could see their vehicles about forty yards from the church. Across the road, a few headstones extending out of the snow marked the location of the cemetery. A large number of cedar and pine trees intermingled with the grave markers. The land was relatively flat with a few knolls toward the east.
The sun did nothing to warm the bone-chilling atmosphere. When Livia breathed deeply, the cold air nearly suffocated her. She zipped her coat high enough to cover the lower half of her face.
“We can get frostbite if we stay out too long,” Quinn said quietly at her elbow. “I don’t want to frighten our companions, but I’m more concerned now than I was before. We have only enough fuel to last two more days.”
“That’s why it’s important to keep them focused on observing Christmas to get their minds off things. I keep thinking it could be so much worse.”
“What’s Allen doing in the cemetery?” Roxanne asked from her stance on the steps.
Livia hadn’t noticed him because he was covered with snow and faded into the white landscape. Allen was cutting branches off of a cedar tree with a hand-saw. Every movement of his hand dislodged a small avalanche of snow that landed on his shoulders.
“He’s getting greenery for a Christmas tree,” Quinn explained. “He found the saw in the woodshed. I’m going to the truck now. I have a gift that will be suitable for the person whose name I’ve drawn. I won’t have to make anything.”
“Don’t stay out too long,” Livia cautioned.
“I won’t. My feet and hands are already cold.”
He held open the door for Livia to enter the building. Their shoulders touched, their eyes met, and the sudden warmth in his gaze caused Livia to look away in confusion.
Chapter Six
Quinn closed the door and paused with his hand still holding the doorknob. An unfamiliar shiver of awareness seized his body. He knew a tense magnetism was kindling between him and Livia.
Stamping his feet to keep the circulation going, Quinn picked up a big stick that leaned against the church to use as a cane as he broke ground to his truck. When he’d been shopping two days ago for his family’s gifts, he’d seen a music box with a twirling angel on top. As he’d listened to the song, “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Quinn felt compelled to buy the gift, although he had no idea who he’d give it to. Now that he’d drawn Livia’s name, it seemed the perfect gift for her. He’d had the music box gift-wrapped in the store, so all he had to do was put her name on it.
Quinn returned to the church in time to help Allen shape the three branches of cedar into the semblance of a tree. They used chunks of coal and wood to secure the branches in a discarded bucket they’d found in the woodshed. They wrapped the bucket in a red silk scarf that Livia provided.
Humming a Christmas tune, Marie strung the cranberries and popcorn into a garland. Les had found a box of old ornaments and some tinsel in the supply room, which Livia draped over their tree. She arranged one candle on each windowsill among some pieces of shrubbery not needed for the tree.
Laughing at their feeble efforts at making decorations, Marie said, “This just proves the old saying, ‘poor people have poor ways, and lots of ’em.’”
Livia stood back to survey their handiwork. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Our decorations are festive.”
“To say the least,” Marie said, with another laugh, and joined Sean and Roxanne, who were still practicing at the piano.
While the others had decorated, Eric wrapped up in a blanket and sat on a pew beneath the stained-glass window. He studied his Bible and took notes on his message for the evening service.
Food, such as it was, was set out on one of the pews, and throughout the day, people ate when they wanted to. No one seemed to have much of an appetite, but they were keeping busy, either making gifts or wrapping what they’d found in their belongings.
Eric and Quinn made another trip to the vehicles before dark to get a shopping bag of things Roxanne had bought in Detroit. She took out a package of wrapping paper and some tape. “You can all use this. I’ll put it on a table in the supply room, and you can sneak in there to do your wrapping if you want to keep your presents secret.”
Little by little, wrapped gifts appeared under the makeshift tree.
When the sun shone through the dirty windows of the church, Livia felt almost happy as she hurried to finish the scarf she was making for Sean. But as darkness approached, she accepted the fact that she would not be home for Christmas Day.
Her mother, Hilda, had always been the strong one of the family, the lodestar that kept her children close to home. But Hilda had also given her children freedom to be independent and make their own decisions. Livia could almost believe that she heard her mother’s voice telling her to make the best of the situation.
Considering the ages of her companions, Livia realized that she was the youngest of the group, just as she always was at home. She’d rather liked being the baby of the Kessler family, but when Quinn had hinted that he hadn’t pursued a relationship with her because he was older than she was, Livia would have welcomed adding a few years to her age.
When Allen brought in the bag of sunflower seeds that Livia asked him to bring, Quinn found an old can in the woodshed and filled it with the seeds. He took a shovel and went with Livia to the backyard. He scooped the snow from the ground under the evergreens, and Livia scattered the seed in several piles. Companionably, they stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers and sparrows hungrily dive into the black seeds.
“This is something else we share,” Quinn said. “We have several bird feeders on our farm, and apparently you do also.”
The more she was around Quinn, Livia realized that they did have
a lot in common—their rural background being one of the most important.
“Yes, we feed the birds year-round, and we always have flocks of them.”
When they returned to the building, Eric was questioning Les about the architecture of the church.
“There’s a steeple on the church, so it must have had a bell at one time,” Eric commented.
Les motioned toward a small square door in the ceiling. “It’s still up there, but there ain’t been a rope on it for a long time. It was a pretty-soundin’ bell.”
“Too bad we can’t ring it,” Eric said. “It would be a nice addition to our worship service tonight. Also, if we ring the bell, people living in the area might hear it and come to help us.”
“That’s a possibility, Eric,” Quinn said. “I’ve got a twenty-foot rope in my pickup. And didn’t I see a ladder in the woodshed, Les?”
“Yeah. It’s kinda old and rickety, but I think we can use it.”
With Les standing on the steps watching him, Quinn made another trip to his truck for the rope. Allen volunteered to climb the ladder and attach the rope. When he opened the trapdoor and stepped out on the timbers of the balcony, he shouted down to the others, “Let’s hurry this up. It feels like the North Pole up here. We don’t want to let a lot of cold air into the building.”
Quinn tossed the rope up to him. Following Les’s instructions on where to attach the rope to the bell, Allen soon dropped the rope through the small hole cut in the ceiling for that purpose. He closed the door and clambered down the ladder.
Handing the end of the rope to Les, Quinn said, “You do the honors, Les.”
Holding the rope in his hand, Les hesitated. “I’ve been having second thoughts about ringing the bell. I should have told you to check the wooden structure, Allen. That bell weighs about a thousand pounds, and the timbers that hold it are old. I’m not sure how strong they are. If they give way and the bell falls through the ceiling, we’ll not have a roof over our head. As the old sayin’ goes, ‘We’d be up the creek without a paddle.’ We’re gonna need all the protection we can get tonight.”