Advent Devotions 2019

To Aunt Cindy's House We Go!

Posted by Lucinda S. Sutton on

My mom had one birth sister, and my sister and I call her Aunt Cindy.  Aunt Cindy has always been a little bit magical to us.  She always knows what we are thinking (good or bad), always comes up with the perfect outings (and can outlast our energy levels on any of them), and nearly always gives us whatever we want that is in her power to give (or artfully explains to us why we actually want something else…and she’s usually right!).

It follows, then, that Aunt Cindy’s house was one of our favorite places to go as children, because Aunt Cindy’s house was different from ours in many magical ways.

At our house, we had to clean our plates every meal no matter what. At Aunt Cindy’s house, we didn’t even have to use plates, and we only had to clean up our messes.

At our house, we had to go to bed at 8:00 sharp.  At Aunt Cindy’s house, we camped out in the living room and didn’t go to sleep until we couldn’t help it.

At our house, we had to eat our vegetables – usually green, oniony, and boiled into submission.  At Aunt Cindy’s house…what’s a vegetable?

One year, when we still lived two states away, we got to visit Aunt Cindy’s house for Christmas, and that was different, too.  Instead of the roast beef dinner my mom made every year, we had Cornish game hens.  Instead of our artificial Christmas tree with giant ceramic bulbs, we had a fresh-cut, fragrant blue spruce with white fairy lights.  And instead of just putting out cookies and milk for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, we also put out carrots.

That one was weird to me.  Setting our tableau for Santa in front of the tree, I was fascinated by that bulbous, stringy bunch of carrots sitting to the side, and I tried desperately to figure out how they could belong.  Were we trying to suggest that Santa needed to clean up his diet or what?  Finally, when Aunt Cindy asked me to hand her the carrots, I couldn’t hold back any more.  “But what are they for?” I blurted.

“For the reindeer, of course,” she answered brightly.  “They’re working awfully hard, helping Santa make all those deliveries.  Don’t you think they deserve a treat?”

Important note: I was about eight years old at this time, and rumors had been swirling at Warren G. Harding Elementary School that Santa Claus was not real.  I didn’t want to believe it, but I also didn’t want to be the last one to know, just in case.  Thus, when Aunt Cindy said this about the carrots, I was both thrilled and guarded.  I resolved to wait and see what would happen. 

It turns out that Christmas morning at Aunt Cindy’s house actually had several things in common with our own.  There was the waking up way too early, the dragging of adults out of bed, and the shooting like loosed arrows to the foot of the Christmas tree so we could explore the wonders beneath.

The biggest difference was Santa’s table. Beside the plate of crumbs and dregs of milk I expected to find, there also sat exactly one nub of a carrot…with tooth marks in it.

I was amazed.  I was flabbergasted.  My hopes soared as my faith was validated.  I had doubted because of the chatter around school about parents faking us kids out by eating Santa’s treats, but this to me was proof positive of the opposite.  No one in Aunt Cindy’s house even liked raw carrots!  My faith had been given a magical boost.

Looking back on it now, I can’t help but think of Anna and Simeon from Luke 2:22-38. These two people had waited all their lives for proof that God would keep his promises.  Then one day, on a routine visit to the temple, their faith moved suddenly from blind trust to physical reality. I’m so thankful for the faith boosts God still sends in my life today, most often through the timely words and actions of others, encounters with the wonders of nature, or even a particularly meaningful and resonant song popping up on the radio or a playlist. All these things remind me that God is near and God’s promises will not fail me now or in the life to come.

I don’t even remember what presents were under the tree for me that year.  The best gift I got was a table scrap, and I didn’t have doubts again for a very long time.

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