Even though she’s been gone for 13 years, I can still hear my mother saying that to me. Her voice is so loud and clear.
Christmas, with all the lights twinkling on the houses, bells jingling from the sidewalk Santas, the smell of baking cookies coming from the oven. The tree in all it’s glory standing tall in the living room. The presents wrapped and placed carefully under the tree. The Christmas carols playing in the background. The snow gently falling outside. As a kid, these are the things that meant the most to me.
People were always nicer then. Strangers smiled and wished you a Merry Christmas. It was the most wonderful time of the year. Now it seems they just mug you for the what you have just purchased, and run off into the night. No one is allowed to wish you a Merry Christmas anymore, it’s politically incorrect. Some stores will not allow the sidewalk Santas who collect the money to feed the poor. (I won’t shop there). Oh everything is still decorated, but with out the reason for the season, the birth of Jesus. They decorate so that you will come and spend all your hard earned money in their store. Stores are decorated before Halloween now. They play seasonal music, but certainly not carols. Instead of being a warm peaceful time, it’s become a shopping frenzy. All the commercials on TV are proclaiming their huge Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Brown Thursday sales. Has anyone really watched or took in the meaning of a Charlie Brown Christmas? I always watched it, but until I really watched it, I didn’t hear the message behind it. Wow, is it still allowed?
The one thing they can’t take away from us is our visit to the stable. My mother would say that I needed to go to church on Christmas Eve, not the barn. And I, being the wise guy teenager that I was, would say “What better place to be on a Christmas Eve other than a stable. Jesus was born in a stable.” So off to church I’d go and then to the barn. They used to say that if you go to the barn on Christmas Eve you would see all the animals bow down at midnight. I’ve been in many a barn and have never witnessed that, but I do believe that they worship in their own way. I also still, to this day, go into the barn at Midnight to check.
The barn has always been an amazing place to be at Christmas. Up north is was usually very cold, icy, and/or snowy. But the sounds of the horses munching on hay, with the chill around you made it really seem like Christmas to me. That is how it must have been on that first Christmas. The chilly night, the smells of a barn as only we can know, the animals munching on hay.
People may go to a candle lit church, with beautiful music being sung, with the story of the first Christmas being retold, but we, as horse people, can really relive the first Christmas like no church can possibly put on. I still go to church on Christmas Eve, but then I still go to the barn at Midnight too. When I was in my 40’s, and Bob got into Fox Hunting, my mother said to me one day, “Well I guess you’re never going to grow out of this are you.” It was not a question, it was a statement of fact that she resigned herself to.
Have a Blessed Christmas, and “Go To The Barn”, it’s the right place to be for Christmas. And don’t forget the carrots and apples.
Have a very Merry Christmas, and to all my Jewish friends “Happy Chanukah” a few weeks late.
Both holidays are politically incorrect. So am I.