Let’s do a Christmas story swap again this year. You send me yours ( Dick@DickSummer.com ) or just add it to the comments on the blog, and I’ll tell you some of mine.
One of the Summer Family’s favorite Christmas treasures is in the next podcast. It gets un-packed each year, along with the long legged little Santa that looks like Lady Wonder Wench’s father used to look. That Santa has hung on our tree for decades. It’s as important a part of our Christmas memories as the delicate, hand made, glass Christmas ball that first hung on my Grandfather’s tree in Germany a couple of generations ago…and the tree top star I cut from cardboard and covered with tinfoil on the first Christmas Lady Wonder Wench and I had together. We couldn’t afford to buy one in the store that year…and looking back…I’m glad it worked out that way. What a memory.
That home made star has graced the top of our tree for decades now. It’s part of our whole family’s memories of Christmas. Christmas is made of memories, hopes, gratefull-ness, magic, and dreams.
Actually, Christmas is only part of what I’m talking about. It’s, “The hopes and fears of all the years…” that’s important here. So it’s really the stories of the heart that count. Christmas is a good focus for stories like that. But so is Hanukah, Solstice, and Kwanza.
The stories of the heart. True ones. Please send yours.
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in Brooklyn , arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished.
On December 19 a terrible tempest – a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.
On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about
20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.
The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity, so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover the hole in the front
wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
B y this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor
invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.
Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. “Pastor,”she asked, “where did you get that tablecloth?” The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.
The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten “The Tablecloth”. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria .
When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and she never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home. That was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the
pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.
One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?
He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years between.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.
He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas
reunion he could ever imagine.
True Story – submitted by Pastor Rob Reid
That’s the most incredible story I’ve ever heard.
Something to consider….but it’s still a fabulous story, true or not.
“The eRumor says the span of time was 34 years. If the original article is true, there could not have been a 34 year interval since the original events are said to have taken place under Nazi rule, which would have probably been in the 1940’s. The date of the article, 1954, was much less than 34 years later.”