That Partridge in your Pear Tree

Not every Christmas goes as scripted.

In early childhood we learned to loudly sing the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song as our Ford Fairlane wove over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house for Christmas.  We sang with gusto, wracking our brains on each round to remember just what came next, joyful and triumphant when we were the first to shout out the next gift, and tipping over in mock exhaustion as the verses got longer and longer.  Laughter was the magic glue that kept the four of us kids from bickering in the back seat or whining nasally, “How much longerrrrrr!”

Grandmother and the Ford Fairlane are long gone; my parents, too, but that song still rings through my mind every Christmas.  Along about December 26th or so, I usually find myself humming that tune, wishing I could list in similar poetic fashion, 12 things that were delightful, memorable, or just plain weird about that particular Christmas.  “The Twelve Yays of Christmas,” you might say.

The closest I came to accomplishing this feat was Christmas of 2022.

I should have known when Oakley gave birth to puppies on December 4th and Jim brought home the gravity-defying tree, that Christmas 2022 would be one for the books. 

You Oregonians will recall 2022 as the year the ice-storm encased the whole left coast in ice for days.  I was stranded with the puppies in our home, hauling firewood and stoking the fire every hour, alone.  Jim’s employer put him up in a hotel out at the coast near the hospital he worked at, where slips and falls and crashes filled his emergency room with desperate patients. And our daughter, blissfully unaware of all this, was somewhere in the skies between Chile and Los Angeles, where she would learn that all flights to Oregon were cancelled for the foreseeable future.

But on Christmas Eve the weather turned warmer, Jim would be heading home, and Molly was safe with friends in California.

I’ll let my journal take it over from here:

12/24/2022:

It’s Christmas Eve.  Remember that.  It doesn’t have to look the same or even be jolly.  A small light, that was truly the Light of the Whole Damned World slipped into the darkness from heaven, stepping to earth, joining our painful and beautiful existence, setting aside all the glory and smelling a little like a barn.  A crack of light.  A hint.  A hope. 

A baby’s small cry. 

Wonder in dark times.  A ray.  A thrill of hope.  A promise.

So Christmas Eve doesn’t look like all the other Christmas Eves.  Its comfort and joy will be new, different, not painted the same as all the other good Christmas Eves—the caucophany at Grandma B’s, the feasts around our long table, the gatherings, the Christmas PJs and the sneaky stuffing of the stockings after dark, the calculating when to start Christmas breakfast.  Christmas Eve will be exactly what it should be.  A pregnant moment in an empty space.  Caring for the little fuzzy puppies.  A quiet hug with Jim.  Problem-solving gymnastics, trying on all the ideas, pulling the trigger on one to get Molly from there to here.  Silence for wondering what salvation looks like, and how God will arrive and mend.  Waiting.

And as we wait, we look.  We search for the baby, the promise, the ray of hope. Like searching for a diamond in all the rumpled Christmas wrappings. 

Which part matters?  The package?  Or the Gift?

Lord, for the broken, the lost, the lonely, the grieving, the frantic, the exhausted, the hurting, even for those whose hearts are full and brimming over with beauty, would you place in each of our hearts today a thrill of hope?  A tiny flame of Light?

Lisa, alone unexpectedly.

Molly, driving long hours. 

Jim, distracted.

Me, grumpy and tired.

Rosie.  And Leio.  The Bonhams.  Paul McB.

“Open up our eyes to see it; open up our ears to hear it:  The King is coming.”[1]

And now, Lord, at 5:53 a.m. on this unwritten day with more questions than answers, please help me to let go and rest in you for a moment.  Know.  Know that you haven’t changed, you will be there, that peace is coming to dwell on earth.

Twelve hours later Jim was safely home with the puppies, Molly was driving north in a rented car, and I was winding my way south through abandoned vehicles and overturned semis toward the auspicious town of Weed, California.  Why?  In a previous gas stop the station had emptied Molly’s bank account.

"It's okay," the bank promised. "The funds will be back in your account. After the holiday weekend."

No one should spend Christmas Day alone in Weed eating potato chips.

I slapped my face and rolled the windows down and sang loudly to keep myself awake as I wound through the dark Siskiyou mountains. A glance at the clock showed 12:01 a.m.

“Merry Christmas, Jesus!” I whispered.

In a moderatly sketchy motel an hour later, Molly and I shared the longest hug and giggled and Merry Christmassed and then hugged some more. My deliciously rumpled and beautiful daughter was on a deadline to deliver the rented car to PDX before she would have to pay for another day, so I handed her cash for gas, kissed her goodbye, and took my turn in the bed she had just vacated. I slept in heavenly peace for three hours before heading North again, alone.

The trip home was long and silent, except for my boisterous singing of every Christmas carol I could conjure up.  When I ran out of carols, there was plenty of time to amuse myself with songwriting, and I got dangerously close to completing my Twelve Yays of Christmas 2022:   

12 thousand flights a-cancelled

11 hours of driving

10 …?

9 …?

8 pups a-squeaking

7 …?

6 …?

5 frantic phone calls

4 amazing friends[2] 

3 hours of sleep

2 cups of coffee

And a partridge in a crooked tree!

I didn’t ever complete The Twelve Yays of Christmas, not then, and not ever. But rustling around in the wrecked wrappings of Christmas, I came up with this gem of truth:

There is always going to be a Partridge in your Pear Tree.

There’s always something that doesn’t fit.  Partridges don’t belong in pear trees.[3]  Babies shouldn’t be born in barns. And waking up in Weed, California after three hours of sleep in a questionable motel doesn’t belong in a Christmas morning. 

But as I drove home alone through silent and still towns on Christmas day, I realized the wreckage of Christmas is kind of the point, after all, isn’t it?  Christ wasn’t born for our pretty moments, our genius, our well-cooked Christmas roasts, or the beautiful Christmas decor.  Christ was born to be God With Us, right here in our Christ-mess.  Becoming one of us, walking the road with us, showing us the way, the truth, and the life. 

Is there a Partridge in your Pear Tree this year?  Christ was born for this!  Christ was born for this.

Click here and sing along!

P.S. If you ever complete your own "Twelve Yays of Christmas," please send it to me!

[1] Referencing Christy Nockels’ song, “The King is Coming,” which you can listen to here.

[2] Four dear friends had picked Molly up in L.A., given her a bed to sleep in, and helped her rent a car.

[3] Partridges don’t eat pears.  So what is a partridge doing in a pear tree?  Here’s a fun explanation.  You’re welcome!