Christmas Stories

A thousand Merry Christmases to you. For every weary retail clerk who has been cowed into muttering a dutiful, politically correct “Happy Holidays” I say; “Merry Christmas—A hundred Merry Christmases to you and yours.”

Christ is Lord. He always has been and he always will be until the New Heaven and the New Earth have replaced this fallen, broken, groaning creation. Christ is Lord ‘til Heaven and nature sing and for a million years every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Christ is Lord. So I say Merry Christmas every chance I get. I’m practicing for eternity.

When I was a boy I delivered papers every morning. I collected on Saturday. If I went too early they resented it. If I went to late they were out and about. Some were faithful as clockwork. They put their sixty cents in an envelope and left it in a box on the front porch. Others you had to hound to get your money. I usually dreaded collecting. It was the biggest part of the job. If I worked really hard and everyone paid I would make 15.00 dollars a week. But at Christmastime, ahh, that was something different.

At Christmastime people often gave me baked goods or candy or even tips. At the time I was a little like Lucy VanPelt of Charlie Brown and Peanuts fame. My very favorite Christmas gift was “cold hard cash.” It made collecting so much more fun. Often people were warm and joyful, sometimes even generous. They might even give you fifty cents or occasionally a dollar above what they owed. That would be a wonderful extravagance. I would take the extra money and lay something away down at Western Auto… I would make weekly payments get it out just before Christmas.

One day I was collecting. It was the Saturday night before Christmas. It was after dark. I still had a few accounts that I had not been able to collect. I was walking down the dark, snowy street enjoying the lights and the trees glowing out of the windows. My heart was warm but my feet were getting a little cold. There were carols in my heart and I was looking forward to warmth and home and family. I was almost done.

One more house. I knocked on the door. The man threw open the door and thundered; “What brings you out so late on a night like this.” I smiled and recited my line: “Collecting for the Dayton Journal Herald.”

“Oh, of course. You’re the paper boy. Whatta’ we owe you?”

“Sixty cents, sir.”

“Let me see if we have any money around here.”

He goes away from the door and I look past him into the jumble of Christmas preparations in the house. I minute later he reaches out and he hands me sixty cents and says, “Are we square?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you. Merry Christmas, sir”, I say.

Then like an angel from heaven he smiles and hands me a five dollar bill and says, “Merry Christmas to you, too. Here’s a little tip for your service.”

Five dollars! A third of a weeks pay in one tip. Five dollars. I thanked him and floated home on a cloud of happy Christmas euphoria.

By the time I reached home I was breathless. “Mom, Dad, look,” I said, holding up my fortune… “I got a five dollar tip.”

Dad said, “Wow. That’s a lot of money. Who gave you that?”

“A man over on Curtis Ave. I think they were having a party and he was in a good mood. He paid me for his papers and gave me five dollars extra!”

“Kenny, do you think he had been drinking? You don’t want to take advantage of someone who’s been drinking.”

“I don’t think so. He just seemed happy.”

In at least a couple places in the Bible there are similarities between people who have been drinking and people who are filled with the Spirit. Sometimes in the bible the two are confused. When a person is overcome with joy they are possessed with an affection beyond themselves… they are filled.

How long since you have been filled with joy, filled with love, filled with generosity—filled with the Spirit? When was the last time you were so possessed with joy or gratitude or generosity people had to check your eyes to make sure you weren’t on something?

Christmas is just a wonderful time to be filled with the Spirit. Try it.

Blessed Christmas
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Christmas Eve 2010

These shoes are thirteen years old. They have been to camps and trials from Flint, Michigan to Watersmeet in the UP. They have been from to Colorado and Wyoming to the Northwoods of Wisconsin. They have been from the Canadian Rockies to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky.

Last night, while doing some rigorous Christmas shopping, the soles of both shoes blew out. Seriously. I wondered if I was going to have to walk back to the car in stocking-feet. They were faithful companions. I should have named them. They lived in faithful anonymity, mostly in the dark floor of the closet, coming out from time-to-time to serve me in the most taxing situations. I will miss them. RIP Hiking Shoes.

Have you ever had a Moon Pie? I had them once or twice when I was a boy. Where my wife grew up Moon Pies where a major food group. The locals say you’re supposed to wash them down with an RC Cola. I suppose that is because they are dry and waxy. I think you have to be pretty hungry to like them.

Don’t be angry with me but they have just never done much for me. They come in flavors like banana and chocolate. They are wrapped in cellophane. It think, originally they were wrapped in wax paper. They are round, a little bigger than hockey pucks, and have a comparable texture.

Moon Pies are the kind of thing you can get away with feeding children who have few options, but they are not something that you find in the church cookbook or at your grandmas for Christmas dinner.

We frequent a little deli/bakery in a place called Kerrytown near Ann Arbor. They make unique and delicious pastries. Earlier this year we happened in and noticed they were selling something new. It was what they calked an “Over the Moon Pie.”

They were Moon Pies on growth hormones. The dropped the grahm cracker filling, used real marshallow, included moist, dark chocolate cake and covered the whole thing in rich chocolate frosting. And there they were sitting just south of the gourmet coffee. We each had one. We bought a third to take home. It never made it. What can I say? When I finished mine I still had a half-cup of gourmet coffee left and I didn’t want it to be lonely.

Sometimes Lois and I will be sitting quietly at home and one of us will say to the other, “Wouldn’t an Over-the-Moon Pie be good right now?

“O, it would. Do we have reason to go Ann Arbor?”

“Not really,”

Truth is the Over-the-Moon Pie at Zingermann’s is actually called “Over the Moon Pie” and it is reason enough to drive to Ann Arbor all by itself. We’ve never done it, but I have valiantly resisted the temptation on a number of occasions.

You would not get me out of my recliner for a standard, run-of-the-mill moon pie. Buy now I’m sure you understand that if you have never had an Over-the Moon Pie you’ve been deceived into believing that you have experienced moon pie. You are a victim of a cruel scam. Trust me. I know these things.

But Seriously

My goal in life has nothing to do with pastry. I want to nudge everyone I meet ever day closer to Jesus. When I talk with people about faith and about Christ, many of them think they know Jesus, but they only know about Jesus. I’ve noticed that many who know a little something about Jesus, church and the Bible have settled for a cheap, plastic imitation of Jesus. They think they know Him and have experienced him, but they have not. They may have been church-goers at one time, but they secretly feel that the whole Christianity-Church thing is over-rated. They tried it and it just didn’t seem worth the time and effort. Others have found it empty, but they trudge on out of a sense of duty or to please others. They have never been awed or thrilled or stirred or transformed by Jesus because Jesus was little more than an empty ritual, formalism, moralism, or tradition to them.

Many are disillusioned or disinterested in Jesus because they know about him and they know people who claim to know Him, whose lives are really not attractive or convincing proof of the power of Christ to transform.

There always have been dark spirits at work to blind people to the beauty of Christ and to make them believe they have met Him, when, in fact, they have not.

Those who know Christ by saving faith are forever transformed. They are thrilled and awed and satisfied with Jesus. If that is not your experience could I humbly suggest that you seek Him with all your heart until you understand and experience what I am talking about.

If I can help, let me know. There is a way you can know Christ in a transforming way. It’s almost Christmas. It’s a perfect time to seek Him.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
Almost December 2010

Here is an interesting post-script: On October 16, 2010, Sonya Thomas, a competitive eater known as the Black Widow, ate 38 Moon Pies in 8 minutes in Caruthersville, Missouri. For further reading there is an interesting article about Moon Pie here