104 degrees and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas--or not

We’d lived in Lomalinda less than four months when, one December day, with the temperature 104 in the shade, I was walking a sun-cracked track while that celestial fireball cooked my skin. We’d just had a wildfire—a regular occurrence that time of year—and the smell of charred grassland swirled in the breeze.

 

The school principal puttered up to me on her red motorbike. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

 

Pris watched me for a few seconds and then laughed—my face had betrayed my thoughts. I’d had to bite my tongue to keep from saying,

 

“This looks like Christmas?

You’ve got to be kidding!”

 

To me, Christmas looks like frost-covered evergreens, and snowflakes, and frozen puddles. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Runny noses. Sledding. Ice skating. Swags of cedar and pine and holly tied with red ribbons.

 

I learned a lesson that parched December day. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” means different things to different people.

 

To most Lomalindians, especially kids, Christmas looked like a bleached landscape, charred fields, hot wind, and a whiff of ashes in the air. Folks enjoyed saying, “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas.”

 

Christmas in Lomalinda included singing carols around a bonfire. And setting off fireworks. And cooling off in the lake.

 

And it just wasn’t Christmas until Tom Branks sang “O Holy Night” accompanied by his beloved Judy on the piano.  (From Chapter 16, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

But, of course, Christmas is so much more than gathering for carols, so much more than sledding, ice skating, and swags of holly and cedar. So much more than a bleached landscape, charred fields, and a hot wind.

 

A couple of years ago, Scott Branks, a neighbor boy and former student of Dave’s in Lomalinda, shared a story that came to mind upon hearing his favorite Christmas song, “Christmas Dinner,” by Peter Paul and Mary. (Click on that link!)

 

Scott gave me permission to post his Christmas memory (from what I figure happened in 1972) about God’s desire for us to love others, even strangers.

Thanks, Scott, for letting me share your story.

 

One of the best Christmases I ever remember is when my father decided that rather than getting Christmas gifts [for each other], we would make little wooden trucks for the children of [nearby] Puerto Lleras.

 

It was the year Jeremy was born the week before Christmas and Mom was pretty busy. Dad was restless to do something, so we all got busy crafting those crazy trucks!

 

We spent several days of our Christmas break sanding and painting the parts and assembling the little wooden trucks for them. The trucks were all the primary colors of the Colombian flag—red, blue and yellow. Super bright and fun!

 

Then we drove into town and gave them to the children in the neighborhoods that we knew. Probably the most meaningful Christmas gift I’ve ever received/given.

 

Now, as an adult, I realize that my father and mother simply didn’t have any money to buy gifts for the five of us [kids]. So, they decided to teach us the true meaning of Christmas—giving. . . .

 

That song [“Christmas Dinner,”] always reminds me of that wonderful year.

 

May we all open our lives with deep hospitality

to reach out to others in compassion, peace,

and joy this season!

Our world is in desperate need of such charity!

 

Thanks, Scott, for sharing your story and heart with us!

The Branks family did what we all are told to do: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah 1:17)

They loved their poor neighbors by their actions and in true caring. (1 John 3:17-18)

 

Our family was so blessed to have the Branks for neighbors, friends, and role models.

 

Christmas at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere

 

Since childhood, I’d listened to Christmas music by the hour, so in Lomalinda I felt blue about having to do without it. But our radio lab guys came to the rescue. They broadcast Christmas music throughout our center, which we picked up on the radio at home by wrapping our phone cord around our radio antenna. Ingenious.

 

My sweet mother-in-law had mailed us felt-and-sequin Christmas stocking kits for me to make for the kids. What fun! We had no other decorations—we’d made tough decisions about what to squeeze into our luggage—so I asked my mom to send a small piece of green felt which I planned to craft into some kind of Christmas tree. I imagined it would turn out sad, even pathetic, but it was the best I could do.

 

Then one day Marge Krikorian—bless her heart!—arrived at our back door with a few Christmas decorations and an artificial tree, twenty-four inches tall. My heart soared. Friends, relatives, and supporters from back home in Seattle sent us tiny gifts to put under the tree for our first Christmas separated from loved ones.

 

Lomalinda’s people knew loneliness and isolation. They knew how it felt to say goodbye to family for years at a time, to leave homeland and traditions and familiar culture, and to spend holidays and birthdays far from home. And that’s why Marge helped us. I’ve always remembered her thoughtfulness so many years ago.

 

December 21, 1976

Dear Mom and Dad,

Saturday Dave borrowed a motorbike and drove the two of us to the nearest town, Puerto Lleras. I’d heard things about it that led me to expect the worst, but it turned out to be better than I imagined. The place wasn’t a Northgate shopping mall—selection was minimal, as was quality—but it was more than I’d seen in four months. I bought a piece of fabric for Dave to give me for Christmas, and Dave bought a gold felt hat for the kids to give him. That’s the way we’re shopping this year.

Art Florer, one of Dave’s fellow teachers, joined us for Christmas Eve dinner and then we walked to the auditorium for a cantata performed by Wes and Mary Ann Syverson’s group. They had created elaborate decorations and lighting, and we enjoyed the professional sound of those talented men and women.

Afterward, we walked to Howie and Shirley Bowman’s home for a small gathering. Howie asked each of us to share memories of a special Christmas from the past. His question made me homesick, yet I knew that in the future if someone asked about a special Christmas from my past, I’d tell them about our evening with the Bowmans and our Lomalinda “family.”

Gladys and Rich Janssen invited us to join their family for dinner on Christmas Day and asked me to bring a gelatin salad. The thermometer in the cool end of our house read 104 degrees. We lived close to the Janssens, only around the corner, but even so, that salad started melting before we arrived.

That Christmas was different from all others, yet friends surrounded our young family. In the years since then, I’ve recognized that no matter where we are, whether it’s a “white Christmas” or a blistering one, whether with family or not, we can still celebrate it. (from chapter 16, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Dreaming of a black Christmas

 

Lomalinda was into the dry season. Daytime temperatures soared to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering.

 

The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving the grasslands stiff and bleached and simmering under unrelenting equatorial sun.

 

From sunrise to sundown, a stiff wind blew across the llanos (plains), a gift from God because the parched wind gave us a break from the profuse sweating we endured in rainy season so, in that way, it was a friend, but it could also be a foe.

 

One blistering afternoon, Dr. Altig hollered through our screen door, “Call for help! We have a fire!” Across the road, at Ruth’s house, flames leaped and smoke billowed.

 

I dialed the emergency number, told my little Karen to stay home, grabbed a bucket, filled it with water, and ran to Ruth’s yard, dousing flames closest to her house.

 

A few buckets later, my heart sank. Wind had whipped the fire out of control. The situation looked hopeless until I noticed that, by God’s grace, the wind blew the flames away from Ruth’s house, toward an unpopulated valley. Rich and Gladys Janssen’s home stood at the top of the low hill beyond.

 

I heard a siren, and soon an antiquated fire truck roared over the brink of the hill. Behind it streamed a line of motorbikes bringing men and boys, shovels, buckets, and blankets.

 

School had dismissed, offices had closed, and every able man and boy took on the role of a fireman, forming a line through the valley. Shovels in hand, they worked toward Janssens’ house, turning over soil, creating a fire line, fighting to keep the blazes from turning back on them. Someone hosed the Janssens’ side yard while flames neared.

 

In Lomalinda, only four degrees from the equator, the afternoon sun alone had potential to sicken a person from even mild exertion, but those men and boys gave their all, surrounded by flames, often without masks. They wore no protective gear as our firefighters do nowadays—they had only the clothes they wore to the office or school that morning. Their sweat-soaked shirts clung to them. Ash and dust coated their faces.

 

The guys succeeded in keeping the fire from the Janssen home, but it raced up a hill near the Kinch home. Wind whipped flames against their brick house.

 

A high school boy, Tim Goring, remembers:

 

“I tried to start a backfire but only had time to drop a match or two, and then the fire roared up the hill toward me. It got so hot I couldn't breathe. I lay down in a ditch for a minute until the fire burned out, then got up to check the house. The fire had melted the window screens and warmed up the propane tanks, but otherwise, no harm was done.”

 

From there the inferno changed its course, beyond Lomalinda, and continued to burn for hours, incinerating grasses and palm trees in its path. By the time the sun hung low in the west, the immediate danger had passed.

 

A couple of miles of grasslands lay between us and our farm, Finca Bonaire, and the staff had plowed a fire line. Before long the sky turned dark, but in the distance toward the farm, red glowing fingers reached into the night sky. By morning the fire had burned itself out.

 

A few days later, I walked a sun-cracked track while that celestial fireball cooked my skin and the smell of charred grassland swirled in the breeze. The school principal, Pris Bartram, puttered up to me on her red motorbike. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

 

Pris watched me for a few seconds and then laughed—my face had betrayed my thoughts. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “This looks like Christmas? You’ve got to be kidding!”

 

To me, Christmas looks like frost-covered evergreens, and snowflakes, and frozen puddles. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Runny noses. Sledding. Ice skating. Swags of cedar and pine and holly tied with red ribbons.

 

I learned a lesson that hot, dry December day. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” means different things to different people.

 

To most Lomalindians, especially kids, Christmas looked like a bleached landscape, charred fields, hot wind, and a whiff of ashes in the air. Folks enjoyed saying, “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas.” (from Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:  A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, Chapter 16)

 

Dreaming of a black Christmas: Why?

In December in Lomalinda, people would smile and say,

“I’m dreaming of a black Christmas.”

Why?

Why would people say such a thing?

You’ll find the answer in Chapter 16 of

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: 

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.

Currently Amazon is selling the paperback version 

at a significantly reduced price, only $14.39!