Seasonal Fibbing
How old were you when you figured out Santa Claus wasn’t real? It’s one of those rude childhood awakenings we continue to perpetuate no matter how disappointed we were in the revelation that the man in the red suit at the shopping mall was also the school bus driver. As Christmas eve neared, I thought about a myth so real to me that it took becoming a farmer to realize it was just a story. Or was it?
Every year at the Christmas candlelight service at church, we were told how the animals would gain the ability to speak. We’d watch cartoons about The Night the Animals Talked, read The Animals Speak: A Christmas Eve Legend, and sing the carol The Friendly Beasts. I held this story like gold until well into my adulthood when I found myself in my own barn with my own livestock at midnight on Christmas eve and all the animals could manage to do was chew their cuds and look at me with disinterest as if I were interrupting and I thought to myself, “No Virginia, there isn’t a Santa Claus.”
It's been a long time since then, but I still make it to the barn to sit with the animals at midnight on Christmas eve. Not because I hope they will speak, but because I know they speak to me every single day. It might not be English, but this agrarian life has taught me that not only livestock, but all of nature speaks in its own languages. Believe me, when the sheep are out of hay or the chickens are out of water, in no uncertain terms they will tell me. Fruit and vegetable plants also have their own languages, saying good morning in spring and good night in fall. Don’t get me started on the mushrooms; they play music!
As customers began streaming into the market on Sunday, the winter solstice occurred unnoticed as patrons gathered goodies for the holiday gatherings. For millennia this was one of the major celebrations around which stories were told and traditions passed down. We still have remnants etched into our own modern identities. Candles and fires, evergreens, holly, and mistletoe, exchanging gifts and feasting with others—that all sounds kind of familiar no matter what your flavor of faith is, doesn’t it?
Those harmless little stories for children are the allegory of adulthood. We give up on the notion of miracles but remember, there was a time when people believed the light was going away for good only to magically return. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, right? One can hope. Recently I finished re-reading Wendell Berry’s The Need To Be Whole and was struck by his assessment that how we treat the land and our environment is indicative of how we treat each other. If the animals could speak at midnight, I think they’d have stern warnings for humanity and a few choice words for me as I start chores later on bitter cold mornings. I will still head down to the barn at midnight on Christmas eve, not in hopes that the animals will speak (they already do that), but in hopes of catching the Ursid meteor shower so I can make a wish on a shooting star.