Merry Christmas from The Isaacs

Our Charlie Brown Christmas

By: Sonya Isaacs

It was winter 1979 in our home town of Morrow, Ohio. We lived in a quaint 1200 sq ft, 2 bedroom house about half way down Lake Road.  Ben, Becky, and I were just children, ranging from 4-7 years old.  We hadn’t begun travelling and singing full time, and Dad had a good job working at Morrow Gravel Company.  We always looked forward to Christmas, but this year, especially, it would be challenging to make it good.  A few months earlier, Dad became suddenly ill and had to have an emergency appendectomy, which led to a hospital stay of almost 2 weeks due to complications.  Having missed 2 months of work to recover, we were struggling just to meet the bills and didn’t have money for nice Christmas things. But we were determined not to let money stand in the way of a special celebration of our Lord’s birth. 

 Dad took us down to the gravel pit where they let us walk through the woods and cut down our very own Christmas tree. I think we must have chosen the scrawniest one of them all; it looked  like the one Charlie Brown picked in the Christmas movie; but to us it was beautiful and we were just as proud as if it were the 80 foot spruce tree lighting up  the Rockefeller Center!  We found one string of old lights up in the attic and Mom suggested we make hand-made decorations to fill it up.  I remember painting long macaroni noodles and stringing them together with thread.  Then we took some aluminum foil and made silver balls.  We took construction paper and cut out stars and angels and pasted yarn and pictures on them creating such delicate works of art!  We worked and worked until we finally filled up the little tree with love and care. 

Spending all that they could, Mom and Dad managed to get each of us a few gifts to put under it.  We didn’t have much, but we had each other, and as we gathered together in front of that little homemade tree on Christmas morning, we had a sincere prayer of thanksgiving and felt more than ever before the truest gratitude for Christmastime and for the gift of having each other.  God has blessed us a little more every year since that humble holiday, but we always take time to remember the Christmas of ’79, what we now refer to as our 

Charlie Brown Christmas. 

 May you find the true joy of the season this year, not just in the beautiful lights, or the bow-tied presents, but in the simplicity of love and in the precious gift of our Lord Jesus’ birth.

 

Merry Christmas and a Blessed, Peaceful New Year!

 

The Isaacs