Christmas Cold and Warm
a Christmas short story
Written by Megan Payne
Illustrated by Bethany Payne
SUNLIGHT BOOKS
Copyright 2004 Megan Payne.
Illustrations: Copyright 2004 Bethany Payne.
Smashwords Edition.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture taken from the New King James Version ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This digital edition published by Sunlight Books for the glory of God. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, except in fair use, by any means without written consent. All rights reserved.
For more stories, please visit www.sunlightbooks.org.
Christmas Cold and Warm
Back when my mama was a little girl, when she was called Isabel Sanchez instead of Bella Wilcox, when her mother was "just a young thing" and very poor, Christmas was a simple affair. It was a time when something "special" was all the children asked for, when family pulled even tighter together against the cold, when fires were warm in heart and hearth, and at least in Abuela's house, when even the food on your plate was fair game to give a stranger.
Those were the days when my abuela—my grandmother—brought home food in a great woven basket covered with dishtowels to keep it and its contents clean. And as my mama told me, the basket came home fuller than ever on Christmas, but never quite full enough.
On one such Christmas—"cold and warm" as my mama says—there was nothing "special," nothing but the usual fare of beans and rice and some chili. Tomás, only fifteen months old, was crying more than ever and Mama, being the eldest of the five, had to carry him around the house singing "Silent Night" to try and get him to stop crying. She was only eleven, but Abuela had left her in charge. Their mama had left for the market with a silver dollar and a few pennies to buy bread and whatever else could be gotten. Their papa had died of pneumonia only a few months after Tomás was born.
The younger children contented themselves with making paper stars and snowflakes to hang next to the pine cones and branches they had gathered earlier. The six-year-old twins, Rafael and Juanita, sat on the floor before the fireplace, while eight-year-old Roberto sat in the middle of their dilapidated old couch with an intent look on his face as he cut and snipped and paused to examine his handiwork.
Isabel finally set Tomás down on the patchwork quilt in the rocking chair and let him cry.
"Are you allowed to do that?" Juanita asked with wide eyes.
"Hush," said Isabel. "And you too, Nene!" she snapped, using Tomás's nickname, which simply meant baby.
He kept on crying.
"Isabel, you know he's just hungry," Roberto said.
"Well, Christmas dinner isn't for another hour!" she snapped.
Roberto got red in the face. "What Christmas dinner? We don't have a Christmas dinner. We've got some frijoles and arroz."
Juanita exploded. "Be grateful, Robbie! God said, be grateful!"
Everyone subsided into awkward silence, even Tomás. Isabel turned, picked him up, and sat down in the rocking chair, wrapping the worn red and yellow quilt around herself and the baby.
Rafael stared silently at the paper star in his lap and Juanita drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
Roberto quietly began singing:
Come, they told me
Pa-rum, pum, pum, pum
A newborn King to see
Pa-rum, pum, pum, pum
The rest of the children joined in.
Our finest gifts we bring
Pa-rum, pum, pum, pum
To lay before the King
Pa-rum, pum, pum, pum…
So to honor Him
Pa-rum, pum, pum, pum
When we come
“What do you think Christmas would be like,” Juanita began, “if Jesus was here and we had to give Him gifts?”
“I don’t know, Juanita,” Isabel replied softly. “I don’t know.”
“But we do,” Rafael said suddenly and firmly, making everyone look at him. “Don’t you see? We do have to give Him gifts. It’s His birthday.”
“What you mean?” asked Roberto.
Isabel looked on with interest and rocked little Tomás.
Rafael turned to Juanita, who often acted as his voice. She immediately turned her full attention on her twin and somehow or another Rafael’s thoughts ended up in Juanita’s head.
She turned to face Isabel and Roberto. “He means we have to ‘do it unto the least of these’…I think.” She looked back at Rafael for confirmation, but he was more into the meaning of the Bible and not the detailed word-for-word’s and gave her a blank expression.
“You know, where it says in the Bible that if you ‘do it unto the least of these my brethren, ye do it unto Me’,” she added for further explanation.
Isabel nodded. “Yes, Juanita. I know it.” Isabel smiled. It was like her mama said, to give when you have nothing to give, and love when there is nothing to love. And to think, six years old and Juanita already had her little fist wrapped around that all-important philosophy of life. But then, not many six-year-olds had read through Matthew, John, Ephesians, and Thessalonians.
Juanita nodded, satisfied, and lifted up another paper snowflake.
“But what can we do?” Roberto asked. “We don’t have any ‘least of these’ lying around.”
Isabel shook her head and spoke quietly, “That’s not what it means, Roberto. You’ll see. It’s Christmas. Someone always needs something on Christmas.”
Tomás whimpered as if to remind them that he needed something too—food.
“Isabel?”
“Yes, Rafael?”
The little boy that he was at the time looked moody, pensive. “We’ve got something to give,” he said haltingly.
Juanita cocked her head. “What?” she asked for everybody.
He looked up with his penetrating, chocolate-colored eyes and locked gazes with my mama. “We have chili, Isabel. And food.”
Isabel leaned forward with furrowed eyebrows, letting Tomás slide away from her body. “Not much, Niño.”
“So?” he asked, looking up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Why can’t we share it?”
“With Mama not yet home?” Isabel asked. “And no bread yet?”
“Want el pan!” Tomás declared. Want bread.
Attention was suddenly focused on the child in Isabel's lap.
Then came the quiet intrusion of Rafael’s voice. “With no bread yet.”
Isabel let her shoulders slouch. She touched the wispy hairs on Tomás’ head. “With no bread,” she whispered, realizing what Rafael wanted to do. To give away all their food and have nothing left but a basket of bread. It’s what her mama would do, but was it what she would do?
Juanita interrupted her thoughts. “What would Jesus do?” she asked loudly.
Isabel's head snapped up. A question for certain. But would Jesus go find someone in need or wait for that someone to come to Him? Maybe she wouldn’t have to answer Rafael’s wish. Maybe she could just wait for Mama to get home.
And then, a knock at the door.
At first, no one moved. Then slowly, Isabel stood and placed Tomás on the end seat of the couch. Roberto pulled the little one close. Isabel tiptoed cautiously to the door and placed an ear against it.
She could hear the sounds of labored breathing, not unlike that of her own mama when she came home with the basket full and a bag of borrowed books after walking a mile home from work.
Not undoing the chain, Isabel opened the door. Through the slender space afforded between door and doorpost, Isabel saw a young woman, perhaps almost twenty, dressed in old clothing and a thin shawl draped around her shoulders. In the woman’s arms was a fat bundle that looked a great deal like an old blanket.
The bundle moved slightly, and Isabel realized it was a baby, dressed more warmly than its mother was. The mother had probably placed all her warm clothing on her baby. Isabel looked up into the woman’s eyes and she saw need. Without speaking, moving neither quickly nor slow, Isabel undid the chain and opened the door.
A quick look of gratitude and understanding passed between Isabel and the woman, and the woman entered, clutching her baby close.
Roberto looked up at her with questioning eyes. Spotting the bundle, he glanced down at Tomás. What if that was his mama and their nene?
Isabel led the woman through the tiny living room and indicated the dinner table, located just behind the rocking chair and in front of the entrance to the kitchen. The fire was hot enough and close enough to warm the area, and the woman sat down gingerly, sighing heavily as though every bone in her body ached to sit and as if every inch of her skin still felt the cold winds and was in need of heat.
Rafael rose from his seat with Juanita watching interestedly, while Isabel moved about the kitchen stove, heating chili and rice in the big iron pot.
Roberto pulled Tomás onto his lap and followed Rafael with his eyes. Rafael crossed the living room and approached the woman on his silent, bare feet.
The woman finally noticed Rafael and started. He had stopped next to her chair and was looking up at her with those all-seeing eyes of his. Isabel watched the exchange warily from her position by the hot stove, but made no move to interfere. The baby in the woman’s arms began to cry, weakly, and not very loud.
Rafael sank to his knees and opened his mouth and sang, softly, sweetly:
Come now, My child, and lay your burdens down.
I will give you rest. I will give you rest.
Isabel slowed her stirring. This song she had never heard. Did he write it himself?
Come to Me, My child, and give Me all your cares.
I will give you rest. I will give you rest.
The baby became silent.
Come, My precious child, and let Me hold you close.
I will give you rest. I will give you rest.
Abruptly, Rafael stopped. He cocked his head ever so slightly and looked deeply into the woman’s eyes, daring her to ask.
Stammering, she did. “Who? Who will?”
He stared into her eyes silently, closing his own halfway, and waited until his eldest sister had set the steaming food in front of the woman before he answered. “Jesus.” Then he stood and returned to his seat on the floor in front of the couch.
Isabel opened her mouth and closed it. He’d left her the hard work.
The woman turned to Isabel and asked her the next question, the one Rafael had wanted her to ask. “Who’s Jesus?”
Juanita opened her eyes wide and asked all too loudly, “It’s Christmas and you don’t know Jesus?”
“Christmas?” the woman asked, still looking at Isabel.
“Navidad,” she replied gently.
“What is that?” the woman asked.
Isabel sat down in the chair next to the woman and clasped her hands on her lap. She could feel the sweat between her fingers. “Christmas celebrates Jesus and His gift, the gift He gave us.” She paused.
“What gift?” the woman persisted, leaning forward slightly, her curiosity outweighing her hunger.
“The gift of life.” Isabel looked up and confidently continued. “Jesus was born two thousand years ago. He was the very Son of God, come to save us from our sins.” She paused again and looked questioningly at the woman. “Do you know God?”
The woman nodded as if to say continue and then took her first bite of the food. The smell of it roused her baby and he began to cry once more. The young mother lifted him up and pushed the blanket from his face. Carefully, she began to spoon the food slowly into his mouth, blowing on it first so it would not burn.
Isabel just watched at first, then she continued speaking. “God’s Son was Jesus, born to a virgin.”
The woman looked up sharply. “A virgin?” she asked, disbelief echoing in her words.
Isabel just nodded. “God was the Father. How could the woman not be a virgin? What sign then could say, ‘this is God’s Son’?” Silence ensued for a moment, then Isabel took another breath and tried again.
“Jesus was born and then He grew up, never sinning in His whole life. He was perfect. And then one day, the religious leaders in Israel arrested Him and tried Him for blasphemy.”
The woman stiffened, almost in horror.
“Jesus died on a Roman cross. He was nailed to it in His hands and His feet. Because He had never sinned God accepted His death as a sacrifice for our sins, and we no longer have to die,” Isabel continued, “as long as we accept Jesus’ free gift, and ask Him to be our Lord.”
“But isn’t He dead?”
Isabel blushed red. “He was,” she answered slowly. “But three days later, He was raised from the dead and is forever alive.”
The woman sat back a bit. “Is this true?”
Isabel nodded and looked at Juanita, who jumped up and scrambled up onto the wooden stool by the fireplace and pulled the heavy black Bible down from off the mantle. “Got it!” she shouted and hopped down off the stool. In short order, the book was in Isabel's hands and the woman and she were bent over the book, though the woman paused every now and then to eat a little more.
When the woman finally left, it was getting late, and though they had sent off their warmest blanket around the woman’s body, no one thought their mama would mind—that is if their mama would ever get home to find out.
“Mama should have been here,” Roberto fretted, while peering out the window and hopping from foot to foot.
The subdued twins were pasting their cutouts onto the walls and around the fireplace where they would not burn, trying not to think about what could be wrong. Tomás had finally fallen asleep, and Isabel worriedly stirred the beans that should have been eaten half an hour ago. But no one would eat without their mama being home yet.
“Are we going to have anything to eat?” Juanita asked, wide-eyed.
“Of course,” Isabel snapped. “There are still the frijoles and still some corn.”
Rafael dropped his gaze to the floor, then Juanita followed suit, as if knowing her brother’s thoughts.
“What?” Roberto asked, momentarily distracted from his worries.
Rafael shifted from one brown foot to the other.
Isabel frowned. “What, Niño?”
He looked up at her. “It’s not over.”
“What isn’t?” Isabel persisted.
“Christmas.”
Then, she began to wonder if my uncle Rafael was a prophet, for there came another knock at the door.
Roberto hurriedly looked out the window. “It’s snowing! Don’t open the door!”
Juanita stood up and stared at the door with big round eyes that seemed as if they could not be rounder. Rafael stared at his toes.
Whoever it was knocked again.
Isabel turned off the stove and walked calmly over to the door. She opened it against the chain and saw an old man, bent over nearly double. His bushy overcoat could surely keep him warm, but he seemed frail and weak and buffeted by the weather. So, Isabel undid the chain and opened the door to admit the man and snowy winds.
Juanita hid behind Rafael from the blast of cold air, and Tomás woke up to cry. But Isabel stood in the full brunt of the wind and helped the man inside with her strong arms. Once the man was inside, she closed the door firmly and locked it, chain and all.
She turned, leaned against the door, and viewed her younger siblings. Roberto was hushed near the window with his arms wrapped around him against the cold. The twins were huddled together on the floor, a bit closer to the fire than a moment before. Tomás had stopped crying and fallen back into a fitful sleep. Isabel closed her eyes. She told me that she prayed harder then than ever beforebut she could pray harder yet, and would.
“Isabel?” Roberto finally ventured.
Her eyelids flew open, and suddenly, she was alive and busy, giving orders like her mama gave them. “Roberto, hot water! Juanita, pull up the comfy chair! I want the tea down, and Rafael, stir up the fire.”
The children flew into action and the old man was soon seated in the chair reserved for special guests and wrapped in a blanket, while Roberto climbed up on the stool to put on tea. Isabel picked up Tomás on her hip and bustled about the kitchen serving beans and the last of their rice and gathering the food and tea on a tray to give to their guest.
Rafael, having stoked the fire, knelt down at the old man’s feet and leaned his head against the man’s knee.
The man smiled shakily and stroked the hair on Rafael’s head. Then he looked up at my mama, who was watching him as she brought the tray. He trembled with every motion.
“Thank you, señorita,” he said slowly. “I am Miguel Garcia. I was lost in the storm and could not see much but your light in the window.” He smiled to emphasize.
Isabel nodded and handed him the tray. He thanked her again before eating.