By MARY BETH MAASSENLos Alamos
‘Tis time for the story of the Christmas miracle. This is my Christmas miracle, and it happened just last year, so this is the first time I have told the story. I am quite certain after you hear the remarkable details you will want to include this tale in your own Christmas story repertoire. Please feel free.
It is early Christmas morning and I am using a new sweet potato recipe in preparation for our holiday dinner. I am very excited about this recipe because I usually find sweet potato casseroles to be too sugary, but this one sounds delicious.
The recipe requires orange juice and orange rind. The day before I bought two oranges at Smith’s, but when I look for them, I can’t find them anywhere. I pull everything out of the refrigerator looking for the oranges. I search the pantry and cabinets. I look under the seat in my car thinking maybe the oranges fell out of the bag and rolled under the seat. The oranges are nowhere to be found.
About 20 minutes into my search, our house guests wake up and slowly shuffle into the kitchen looking for coffee. This is when I learn that one of them, unaware I need the oranges for a recipe, has eaten them both. The oranges were, he reports, delightful.
So now my options are to skip the orange, which I don’t want to do, or knock on a neighbor’s door. We are very friendly with all our neighbors, but showing up in their kitchen at 7 a.m. on Christmas morning looking to borrow an orange is a little overbearing. While I am not willing to knock on their door, I am willing to accost them while they are outside feeding goats or alpacas, or walking a dog.
So I bundle up and trundle down the driveway to see if anyone is out and about on our lane.
As I approach our gate I see a box leaning against the fence. We arrived home late the night before and the box was not there at that time. It must have been delivered early this morning. The box was covered in Harry and David (purveyors of fine gourmet foods since 1934) logos. Could it be? I grab the box and hurry back to the kitchen. As I open the box a chorus of angels sing “hallelujah!”
Indeed! It is a box of oranges! (Actually, it is a box of a hybrid citrus called Honeybells, that look like oranges but they are really a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit, but on this particular morning, it is close enough to qualify as both an orange and a Christmas miracle).
I have never in my life ever received a box of citrus as a gift, and now, at the very moment I need an orange more than I have ever needed an orange before, a whole box appear from nowhere. Isn’t that amazing? And this is my Christmas miracle. Merry Christmas everyone!
This is a wonderful time of year for miracles. Some, like mine, are really inconsequential. But this story reminds me of just how little it takes to make someone happy. Every time a dollar is dropped in the Salvation Army Kettle, an angel is plucked from a giving tree, or request for assistance is met, someone receives a miracle. This is the season for miracles.
