Christmas in a stinky cow barn?

When I was a farm kid growing up in Saginaw County, Michigan, Christmas was a wonderful time.  It isn’t that we had a big house festooned with lights.  It was actually a very modest farmhouse, parts of it dating back to the late 1800’s.  We didn’t have a real fireplace, but every year Dad would assemble a cardboard one made to look like bricks.  We could hardly wait until it was up so we could hang our stockings on it.  We always had a real tree, but it couldn’t be very big because our living room was pretty small.  But once it was up and decorated I loved lying on the floor with my head under the tree looking up through the branches at the decorations and lights as I listened to Christmas music.  One of my favorites was an LP by Perry Como.  One side contained a telling of the Christmas story with songs and carols along the way.  There lying on the living floor it was warm and comfortable and the sights and sounds were, well, Christmas.

But we did live on a farm – a working dairy farm. (emphasis on the word working).  And no matter the season and no matter how warm it was in the house and cold outside, the cattle needed to be fed, milked and tended.  It was hard work, but most of the time I didn’t really mind.  In fact, I rather enjoyed it.  Most of the time. 

I guess I was about 10 years old when it happened.  I had to go out and help do the evening chores.  Neither of my sisters had to go out in the cold and into the cowbarn to help, but I did.  I didn’t like it that day.  I wanted to be in the house in my Christmas position near the tree enjoying the pleasant sights and sounds of Christmas.  But here I was out on a cold starry night in a barn warmed only by the body heat of the cows.  They stood there in their stalls contentedly munching their feed, while I could have been inside watching some Christmas special on TV and eating popcorn.  All I could hear in the barn was their jostling in the straw and the occasional bleating of one of the young calves in the other end of the barn; sometimes a cow would let out a low “moo,” but that it was it.  Nothing Christmas-y about that.  No Perry Como, just that annoying “moo.”  And it sure wasn’t Christmas cookies in the oven I was smelling, but rather corn and hay after it’s been run through a cow.  And my sisters were inside and I was stuck out there.  So I just went about my work with a bit of a resentful attitude in the last place I wanted to be that night.

I don’t know when it hit me.  Perhaps I was humming one of those carols of Christmas.  Perhaps the words of Perry that I had memorized came to mind, “There was no room in the inn, so his mother lay baby Jesus in the soft sweet hay of a manger.”  All I recall now is that it suddenly dawned on me:  Were these very sounds that I am hearing the first ones to fall on the ears of baby Jesus?  Before the angels sang or the shepherds came adoring, was it the gentle bleating of a calf or the low reassuring moo of a cow what lulled him to sleep?  Was this warmth produced by the closeness of cattle what warmed him on that night? Is this rich, earthy smell what greeted his first moments in the world?  And then I realized that on that cold night in a warm barn with no colored lights, no carols, no cookies, and no Perry Como I was in the best place I could have been to truly appreciate what Christmas is – what it really is. 

I still remember that night every year when Christmas comes around.  I’m glad for it.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness and the sparkling festive trimmings of this season, that I could almost forget what that first Christmas was.  God himself came into the flesh to serve sinners.  He was born in a barn, a place of work, as if God were saying, “Roll up your sleeves, Son, you’ve got a world to save and it won’t get done without you.”  And that’s what Jesus did.  His whole life every day working away at keeping God’s law so that we could stand before God today righteous in his sight.  And then in the last big labor of love he went to the cross to atone for our sins and redeem us to be God’s own. 

So, merry Christmas!  Celebrate it in the stable in your memory, but celebrate Jesus in your heart!  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:  a Savior has been born to you – he is Christ the Lord!