As Told by Mrs. Pearl Ginther to
son Ronald Ginther
The Moral to this story is:
Don't give up too soon!
Especially not on Christmas Eve,
a night of the Greatest Miracle of all!
***********
Christmas is a time of great joy for all Christians in
the world. We celebrate the birth of Jesus our Lord and Savior in
Bethlehem, a small country town like Bryant, with fields
all around and many animals--animals like sheep and
donkeys. It can snow in the high hills of Bethlehem too,
which makes it even more like Bryant, which gets plenty
snow every winter. In the Bible we read how a miracle
happened just outside Bethlehem one starry night: angels
found some shepherds out tending their flocks of sheep and
announced to them the birth of a Savior, Christ the Lord,
and told them they would find him lying in a manger in
Bethlehem.
As soon as they recovered from their surprise, off the
shepherds ran to find this newborn Savior, and they did
find him, and, because they believed the angels, fell down
and worshipped him. Then they hurried to tell other
people what had happened.
Many hundreds of years later, way across the world from
Bethlehem, people in South Dakota prepared to celebrate the
same wonderful event the shepherds witnessed so long ago.
In this case, it was the Stadem family of Plain View
Farm--Mama and Papa and the nine children, who piled into
the big, old sleigh, with rugs and blankets to keep warm on
a starry, cold, snowy Christmas Eve. How excited the
children were! How they looked forward to the Christmas
decorations at church, the special music of the choirs, the
Christmas story read out of the Gospel of Luke in the
Bible, the singing of joyous carols, and the special bag of
treats handed out to each child at the close of the
program.
All this transpired beautifully at a little church a
few miles distant across the snowy hills. Afterwards, on
returning home the sleigh full of happy Stadems slipped too
far over to the side of the road and suddenly overturned
into the ditch. Everyone, including Mama holding the baby,
was thrown out into the cold, deep snow. What a shock!
"Are you all right?" Papa called out to Mama and the baby.
"Yes, Papa," Mama said. They found they weren't hurt,
but it was an unpleasant experience, trying to climb out
and get back into the sleigh, with their clothes and faces
all plastered with ice and snow. Besides this, the gift bags of
candy and fruit each child received had landed in the snow,
and when they looked not all could not be found since it was
dark and impossible to see anything covered by the thick snow.
Christmas without this special bag of candy and fruit?
What else would they get? Maybe this was all, since
gift-giving was so expensive, and had to be kept to a bare
minimum on Plain View Farm. Losing a bag of treats meant
one might go without any Christmas gift that Christmas.
How sad! They had all counted on enjoying these precious
gifts at Christmas. Now what a bitter turn of events, it
would seem on a day that was supposed to be full of joy and
happiness! Try as they might, the children could not turn up all the bags!
Yet Papa was not the daddy to give in easily where his
family's happiness was concerned. "I think there's one more," he said. He thought carefully of
what he could do. He knew he couldn't see where the candy
bag was hidden in the snow, but his feet could feel,
couldn't they? Sliding along, feeling with his
feet in the snow, he located the missing bag, and it
was reunited with its happy owner. Joy restored to all
hearts and faces, the Stadem family sailed off toward home
at Plain View Farm.
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