Christmas Steve
Christmas Steve began years ago, merely a quip in response to Riley’s running Advent countdown.
“Just 8 more days until Christmas,” she will say, standing at attention beside the white board, holding her dry erase marker like a wand, shaking it in the air for emphasis. Riley considers calendar-keeping critical to her sanity, and at least 3 of the rest of us consider the attention-seeking way she does it somewhat detrimental to ours.
If we appear absorbed in another conversation, say, or in doing some insignificant thing like giving Adam a shot, Riley will call our names until we turn and attend. Every time I’d get a little annoyed about this, a tiny voice chides, Remember those days when she couldn’t speak?
“Annnd,” Riley will continue, sufficiently satisfied she has our attention, “just 7 more days until Christmas Eeeve.”
To which, Kevin one day began to evenly reply, “Annnd, just 6 more days until Christmas SSStteeve.” Humor breaks up the rituals and keeps our hearts tender.
In response to this, Riley would lose her authoritative posture and relax into a slump as she said, “Huh?”
“You know, Christmas Steve,” Kevin would say matter-of-factly, as though Christmas Steve were as commonplace as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“What’s Christmas Steve?” The dry erase marker dangled down beside Riley’s leg, but she kept turning back to look at the white board, as though contemplating the correction to her notes.
“Well, if Christmas Eve is the day before Christmas, what do you suppose Christmas Steve is?” Leave it to Kevin to turn a joke into a teachable moment. At this point, year after year (it took a few), I turned away, because I couldn’t let Riley see my widening smile.
“Umm, I don’t know.” It’s not that she’s unable to follow the logic, but more that she knows Christmas Steve is not a thing. Well, she did. And what Riley understands of humor, she has learned from her dad, whom she trusts most of all people. Hence, her conundrum.
“It’s the day before Christmas Eve, of course,” Kevin would say, hiding his own grin, waiting to see whether Riley would accept this or politely disregard it.
“Oh.” And on we would go. For a few years, Riley simply turned back to the board and her announcements. And finally, one year it took. Christmas Steve became a thing, at least to us.
Now, Riley stands every morning beside her whiteboard and clears her throat, and we all must attend to the counting down toward Christmas, and Christmas Eve, and yes, Christmas Steve. She even enunciates carefully so that there can be no confusion: 7 days until Christmas EEeve, 6 days until Christmas STteve. Well aware that no such notation exists on any printed calendar we own, Riley finally accepted and included Kevin’s made-up holiday because he just seemed determined that she should. She has always been much more patient with our eccentricities than we have been with hers.
And then last year, on Christmas Steve, Kevin assembled all of us in the living room. “It is now time to begin the Christmas Steve festivities,” he began officially.
The adults grinned, snickering a little, as Kevin, wearing a garish West Virginia Mountaineers Santa hat, plopped a lumpy pillowcase on the ottoman in front of us. Riley slid up on the edge of her chair in anticipation. She has come to appreciate that certain special things go with being her father’s daughter. Like, for example, the nicknames only he has for his children and Christmas Steve–anticipated only by those who love him. Whatever this will be, she’s prepared to love it, because she loves her dad and she loves being his.
“So since on Christmas Day gift-giving happens from youngest to oldest, on Christmas Steve it will happen from oldest to youngest. It is, after all, an upside-down Kingdom. The first will be last and last will be first, and all that.” Kevin began distributing packages, wrapped not with gift wrap, but in old grocery bags, the kind we use to line the garbage pails. Out of Food Lion and Wal-mart and Target labeled wrappers, some with little holes and the odd leftover receipt, we each pulled our own “gifts”–bits of broken, unused, and discarded things to which Kevin had ascribed, with some explanatory preamble, new value. My mom, for example, received an old book light that had been sitting in Kevin’s bedside table drawer, because she never can quite find enough light. I received a long-unused wireless mouse, for all of my hours of computing, and Riley an old Fitbit charger, because “I know how much you like to be able to keep track of how little sleep you get.”
I don’t remember all of the items now, just that we laughed so hard the sides of my face hurt afterwards. And although it all happened in fun, it offered us some pretty special lessons. Like, for example that it really is the thought that counts. More than items we use for a time and then forget or discard, the real gifts we have are the people who love us and the certain knowledge that that love propels them to give.
And so also God’s compassions for us are “new every morning” because he loves us greatly (Lamentations 3: 22-24), and his gifts are good and perfect (James 1:17), no matter how they come adorned. God’s most indescribable and glorious gift of grace came to us all in the smallest, most vulnerable, most surprising package–newborn human flesh. Of Jesus, Isaiah prophesied,
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53:2 NIV
In the most humble wrapping of all, in the most humble of circumstances, on a day that became a thing only because of love, because we needed a rescue from ourselves, God gave himself.
This year, weeks before Christmas, as we spoke of our favorite traditions and began to make those lists we all march through December holding, those lists of foods and moments and people and gifts, Riley said, “I can’t wait for Christmas Steve! I love getting old things as presents.” But what she really meant, of course, was that she loves that on Christmas Steve, her dad gives away bits of himself. Because with those humble, unremarkable things, we all unwrap the most precious and powerful gift of all: Love.
