Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Twelve Days of Christmas


I made cinnamon buns for my gospel doctrine class this morning. I had a few left over and decided to take a plate to a family in the ward whose mother has been in the hospital. As I walked up the front porch a flood of memories came over me and I realized it began exactly eleven years ago today!

When our children were young we adopted the tradition of taking the “Twelve Days of Christmas” to a family. Our children loved it and looked forward to every time it was “their turn” to make the drop, ring and run. In all the years we did it, we only got caught once. By 1999 our children were all out of the home and it had been a few years since we had done it. That year everyone was coming home, including two grandchildren ages 5 and 4, and we thought Bennet and Emily would really enjoy participating in the activity. Unfortunately, we didn’t think about the fact that none of them would arrive until just a few days before Christmas and Randy and I would have to be “Christmas Pixies” all by ourselves for the first week. We chose a darling little family with six children – yes, the very family I was visiting today. Although Randy and I felt a little bit old to be ding-dong ditching and driving “getaway” cars, on the 12th evening before Christmas we drove quietly down their street. Randy drew the short straw, so I pulled into a neighbor’s driveway about five houses up the street and turned off the car. Randy headed quickly up the street with the hood of his parka pulled up. This was a tough house to surprise because there is a large picture window within inches of the front door. Through the window we could see the family sitting around right there in the living room. Randy put two little wooden lambs on the porch, rang the bell and ran around the house and behind a bush in the neighbor’s yard. “Oh, I’m too old for this!” But he didn’t get caught.

The next night we left a shepherd. The third night we left a camel, and then came the three wise men. By this time I’m sure they realized that it would become a nativity set. We delivered the stable, the cow, the donkey, Joseph and Mary. On Christmas Eve, only the baby Jesus was missing. To heighten the anticipation for the arrival of the Christ Child, we did not deliver it on Christmas Eve. We had actually wrapped it and mailed it earlier in the week with instructions not to open it until December 25th. As each family member arrived for the holidays they joined in the activity, and soon we were parking two cars somewhere on the street so everyone could watch and enjoy the excitement.

At testimony meeting in January, the father of the family bore his testimony about how much fun that had been for their family. He said he wished that whoever had done it could have been flies on the walls of their home to observe how excited their children were as they waited each evening for the mysterious visitors. We would have turned the tables. We wish they could have been flies on the walls of our home to see how exciting it was for us each evening – lots of planning about where the getaway cars would park, who would take the nativity piece to the door, how to keep from being seen by the family inside, and how to decide whether to ring the bell or not. On nights when it seemed too risky to ring the bell we would simply leave it, then call on the phone and notify them that they should check their porch. Making that phone call was almost as scary and exciting as making the drop. Brent liked to call. He always tried to talk like a Chinaman. That, of course, would send the rest of us to the floor with hysterical laughing. Fun! Fun! Fun! That was the last time we ever did the “Twelve Days of Christmas”. I do have one more nativity set on hand, but we’ll definitely need some helpers!

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