“As Christmas approached, we thought about how we could celebrate the season. Our new congregation was only able to give us $15 dollars a week as a salary.”
Explanation: For many reasons, Christmas has been a difficult time of year for me for a very long time. When Grant, my Great, Grand, Most Exalted Guru at Graceland, asked me to write a Christmas piece, I reluctantly agreed and submitted "Busted By The Claus". Then he had the nerve to ask for another. In a series of E-mails, I explained that when I threw my bucket in the Christmas well, it didn't hit water, it didn't hit mud, it hit rock solid dirt! Well, he put a bit of a guilt trip on me (grin) and I began thinking it through again. The following story is so personal and intimate that I've never shared it with another person. This is however, absolutely, without a bit of a doubt, my very last Christmas piece...at least for this year! (grin)
My wife and I were married in June, 1960. Thirteen days after our wedding, we arrived in a very tiny village nestled amidst the corn fields in northern Illinois.
We came to pastor a pretty new congregation. Our meeting house was a Grange Hall. That cost us $5 a week. Our home was a twenty-two foot trailer with a good-sized room added on. There was a basement under the whole thing. Our bedroom was in the basement of the add-on room. It leaked when it rained. In fact, I used to jokingly tell people that I didn't have to leave our home to go trout fishing because of the stream that ran across the basement floor. The upstairs room served as a meeting place for our group other than Sundays.
We'd often talked and dreamed of having a child of our own. What a thrill it was to learn that we were pregnant. On Labor Day in 1961 this tiny little bundle became ours. In spite of our desire to have a family, it was still pretty scary to drive up to this humble little home and unload this little boy.
Naming him had been very difficult for some reason. During the six day hospital stay, the nurses kept pestering us to name him. We kept dragging our feet. They even threatened to put "no name" on his birth certificate. Finally the two of us agreed that we'd ask the Lord about it again and then write down our choice on a piece of paper. We both came up with Timothy John. "John" came from the middle name of the kindly, elderly general practitioner who saw us through the pregnancy and delivered Tim — Dwight John Ladd.
As Christmas approached, we thought about how we could celebrate the season. Our new congregation was only able to give us $15 dollars a week as a salary. A bit different from many of the "packages" for preachers today, eh? We didn't realize we were poor, but we did know that we didn't have much money! I hunted for our meat. We walked the nearby railroad tracks searching for wild berries and put them in our freezer. Del Monte trucks turned a sharp corner in front of our home. We gathered the pea vines and corn that fell off when they turned the corner and put them in our freezer. God supplied!
We realized that gifts that cost money were out of the question for us. We realized that Tim wouldn't know that he didn't "get" anything for Christmas. However, we wanted to do something to make our home seem "Christmasy". Through a friend, I learned that I could "acquire" some branch trimmings from some evergreen bushes at our local cemetery. I brought them home strapped to the back of our '61 VW. We sorta wound them together and put the concoction in the corner. Now, what to do!
A family in our church brought by a bag of groceries. Inside was a bag of popcorn and some fresh cranberries. We threaded the bright red berries and freshly popped corn. What fun it was to string them around, in and through the evergreen creation.
On Christmas eve, we put "Tiny Tim" in the midst of our special decorative wreath. We held hands and began singing Christmas carols acapella. We realized that other homes in our village had lovely trees with store-bought decorations. Under those trees were piles of neat gifts, each wrapped and tied with special paper and bows. The families probably spent far more on non-essentials every week than we took in. It was a very humble scene, but one I'll never ever forget!
As I look back on all this, I think of the setting of Christ's birth. It was pretty humble, too. Jesus turned out pretty good in spite of His very humble beginnings. (grin) BTW, so did Tiny Tim. For one thing, he's over six feet tall. He's a good husband and the most excellent father of three good kids. His Christmases are different, that's for sure. However, to me, I'll always treasure and cherish that memory of his very first Christmas!
Jerry Meyer AKA PapaJ, past away June 21, 2005. He got an early Christmas present. Miss you bunches, Jerry!—Grant