Have a Merry Christmas!

Garden City Second Ward Nativity 2012
Photo by Lauriann Wakefield

 

Christmas

By Bob Stevens

      Ann and I were born and grew up in Utah but moved to Seattle, Washington in September of 1956 when Ann was nineteen and I was 21.  We had a brand new baby, born in August, a brand new job paying $1.75 an hour, no money in the bank, no arrangements for a place to live, and a hazy future.  I headed to Seattle without Ann so that I could get processed into my new job and find a place we could rent.  Ann and the baby stayed with Ann's parents while I was house hunting, and while she was recovering from the birth plus the shock of moving away from her family right in the middle of trying to learn the ins and outs of motherhood. 
 

      I probably wouldn't have made it those first few weeks except that my dad gave me twenty dollars to help me with expenses as I was leaving for Seattle.  Even then the only thing I could afford was to rent a bed in an attic room shared with another fellow who I didn't know.  There were no cooking facilities and so I just bought a sandwich wherever I could find one at a price low enough to afford.  Once I had gotten my first pay check I found a little two bedroom house to rent for $95/month and sent for Ann.  Her parents moved her, the baby, and all our belongings to Seattle.  It took one very small U-Haul trailer and a few things in the trunk of their DeSoto car.  We lived in the Seattle area for the next fifty years, but we drove to Utah almost every year to spend Christmas with Ann's family in Porterville, a little farming community just outside of Morgan, Utah.  Vic and Zylpha Shaw, Ann's parents, had lived in that little 150-year old house since early in their marriage.

 

      Over the years the roads we traveled between Seattle and Porterville varied from dry to wet to blizzards to solid ice, but every year we returned to Porterville for Christmas .... like lemmings to the sea.  One Christmas we wrecked our new car, but pushed on to Porterville by bus because that was our tradition.  Spending Christmas anywhere else was unacceptable to us and our children.  The home of Ann's parents, were we stayed, was small with one tiny bathroom, but the kitchen was big and so was the love that we all felt there.  Christmas eve was hot, homemade chili cooked on a coal stove, and pan-fried bread made fresh from dough rolled and kneaded by Zylpha on the kitchen table.  Outside it was cold, but inside it was warm because Zylpha carried buckets of hand selected coal and tended the big fireplace that heated the front room.  Napping on the floor in front of that fireplace was a warm and delightful way to spend a lazy afternoon. 
 

      Remember that Christmas is first about Him whose birthday we celebrate, and then it is about family and tradition and caring about others.  To Quote Thomas S. Monson, "...our opportunities to love and give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable.  Today there are hearts to gladden, kind words to say, deeds to be done...."  So from the Muddled Male and Ann, his wife, we hope that you have a Christmas filled with the happiness of family and traditions of love.  And if you are faced with challenges we wish you understanding and hope.