This story I wrote, called The Christmas Quilt, was written some eight years ago when my family first moved to Indiana from our home in Williamsburg, Virginia. It is a cozy and quaint Christmas read, that brings our Savior into its threading near the end. – Leah Beaty

I found the books at the Old Church Shoppe, here in Leo, not but a mile from our house.  The shop that makes my children and I giddy and charmed each and every time we frequent it.  We have found our speck of old and Williamsburg, here in Indiana, and so far away.  We have found it among the quaint, lit-up windows, covered in veils of lace curtains.  We found it creaking on old, wooden floorboards, as we browsed items of old among their home of old.  We found it with each treasure we pick up.  The old picnic basket we’ll make memories with.  The elegant, silver cake platter and serving spoon, already in photo from Ava’s fancy, old-fashioned 11th birthday.  The old truck is for my older boy, Bryce.  The old Raggedy Anne and Andy for my girl Ava.  The old, the old, the old.  And these books.  

I saw them tied in a ribbon bundle of five-stacked books.  They were perched atop an old writer’s desk.  Their look alone drew me to them.  Their worn and weathered exteriors.  The color of old-time Christmas on their covers.  “Christmas Books,” they were marked.  I unbound their ribbon containment to get a better look.  The smell of their yellowed pages seemed to fragrant their stories with an air of richness and specialness.  Stories of Christmas to read to my children before bed.  They were thick and novel-like, but they’d be read, no doubt.  And enjoyed.  If, by none other, than myself.

And, as imagined, we read them every night.  Rather, I read them, while my youngest of six would suck down his water too loudly, play with his brother’s plastic horse set near right under my reading eyes and nose, and do basically everything but lie still and listen intently.  His older brother, he desperately wanted to pick out the second book, The Christmas Donkey, but more often than not, he’d be halfway into Dreamland before the chapter would be through.  My daughter, she’d feign interest, but nightly I’d catch her up to speed just in case the mind wandered a bit with the small amount of scattered pictures offered.  Still, kids “with” me, or reading solo, I adore the old set.

Apart from The Christmas Donkey book, we have read one entitled, The Christmas Stove.    Each book was written by the same author, but with a plot of Christmas set about a new country, and with it, customs. 

Here is our sixth old-fashioned book, penned of our own lives, with my own hand, entitled The Christmas Quilt.  It is set about the country of the United States.  Though the ink is fresh, it too has a plot and page of aged yellow.  The heartbeat of this family and home as old-fashioned as the bundle perched upon that old writer’s desk.  The Christmas Quilt.  Written for my loves, Christmas 2018.

The Christmas Quilt

I watched my hands steady, as square, by square, I pieced old-time, Christmas fabric together on my mom’s old sewing machine.  I was giddy to have it out again.  The sewing machine.  Not in the garage, where it’s been since we moved in, but in a cozy corner in the basement, available to swing open its top and lift to unveil the old machine that could, out from its hiding spot beneath. Another sewing project.  They moved and relocated me, is still the same me, I’m privy to think.  

It wasn’t with the start of this Christmas Quilt, you see.  It was a few days before that, when my daughter’s Colonial dolls, of which I made and gifted to her in Williamsburg, namely Sue, Pocahontas, and Wendy, were undressed of their former Colonial and Indian every-day flare, and redressed with newly-sewn Christmas dresses, ones I fashioned and cut from the same fabric the would-be Christmas Quilt would be made of.  And, I smiled to be making dresses for them again.  That my eleven-year-old daughter still wanted me to.  That I can still create the old Colonial and Indian look, when Williamsburg and Jamestown were now so far away.

But, was it really?

For, wasn’t I just days before, slow-roasting thin slices of meat for my husband?  Marinating the beef, then setting it to the lowest possible temperature in the oven for some four hours, till the house smelled of Jamestown; the leathery strips of beef jerky my Indian-wife-like way of taking care of my man.  The one who went out and hunted, that I might prepare the best of slow-roasted, dried beef for him from his kill.  How he lit up at the sight of all those strips of beef left big and large and irregular in those glass-canning jars!  I wrapped it in rustic paper wrapping and bound the package with burlap string.  Around the jars, I secured brown-paper notes with the words, “Homemade Jerky,” and “Made with time, love, and patience,” just in case he failed to realize the love that went into making such a treat.  He ripped into it, the way God intended with the makings of our molars.  The Indian way.  The man eats beef way.  And, we delighted in the savory, salted beef that took us back to yesteryears.  The nostalgia of the mere look of the gift.  Earthy, meaty, manly.  In a small way, I brought us back there, to where we weren’t able to ride the ten minutes to on Thanksgiving.  I brought us back to Jamestown. 

Because, I’ve still ached for where we were but a year ago, when memories would pop up on Facebook like a loving, torturing pest.  As, that is the paradox of my heart upon seeing the charm of where we lived, just yesteryear, in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Dozens of pictures of my loves ice-skating smack-dab in the middle of the quaint and lit-up streets of Colonial Williamsburg.  Cozy houses, with candles glowing soft and warm in their windows, in the background.  Joy thick on smiling faces; nostalgia glowing as the strands of lights ‘round towering Christmas trees.  

And the church pictures.   I knew those would sting when they’d pop up.  Like the tea-time ones, on our ferry boat ride to Surry, Virginia for our mother-daughter-turned-whole-family tea time, on an old Estate garden’s grounds.  Thee Bruton Parish Church of Colonial Williamsburg.  The only church, among all the old, and from days of old, that still has regimented church services each Sunday.

“Let’s go!” I had said to my husband.  “On Christmas Eve, let’s try it out!  It would be so nostalgic and more special, than attending our regular contemporary church service.”  That, and I knew at the time that time was of the essence, as already we knew an impending move was in the forecast.  We’d end our chapter in Virginia with a bang, I had thought.  A just-us-family enjoying a secret special, known only to our hearts alone.  

And, I wore my new, old dress (new-to-me; old, as I found it at the AMAZING Goodwill store I always shopped at by The William and Mary College), with my (new/old) matching, Christmas-red purse, and high heels, and savored a night to remember with my loves.  Family far from where we were, but feeling every bit of family and “home” among just the five of us.  

The line was slow-moving, thick, and long, as men and women, young and old (but mostly old) lined the cobblestone wall that lead to the church.  And, I snapped pictures of my loves moving, as in slow-motion picture, in a scene of reality colliding with movie-making fantasy.  They were literally walking towards a moment back in time; where our forefathers and many a people of past, gathered to worship the same and only Lord.  

The church was packed.  I was fearing being rejected as a family outright at the mere lack of space and seats.  But, though it seemed as such, they took our lot of five, past the crowded and squeezed rows and rows of seats, right up to the front, where one lone, teeny bench might hold two parents and three smaller rears.  And it did.  My husband at one end, me at the other, we were like two benchmarks and anchors for our littles in between.  And together we’d look with wide eyes at the Christmas-dressed alter, so close.  The large and charming chandelier overhead, with lights of fifty or so lighted, high-rising candles.  

And, when the caroling was over, we exited out the old doors to the sound of the Fifes and Drums bounding in the Colonial streets.  The music really never stopping.  It beat and drummed, in tandem with our steps, as we neared a glow so high, we’d have to arch our heads and look towards the heavens just to take in the top.  The massive pine tree dressed in Christmas.  It was a magical night.

To church just the other week, I quick grabbed that bright and cheery Christmas purse, as December is the only month I’m brave enough to take it about.  On the ride over to the church of new and modern, I pulled out the Christmas Eve program for Bruton Parish Church from a year ago.  Now, that stung.    

But now, here’s a little salve.  A little balm when I felt my heart was bent to bleed.  Remember that old piano that I discovered?  The one that took four men and an angry gash out of my floors to move in?  Well, it’s had its singing voice this Christmas season.

I slowly and carefully turn the pages of an old Christmas song book I had found at my parents, one with the papers all yellowed and the edges all worn and torn, and I plunk the right-hand keys of Silent Night, O Come all ye Faithful, and all the carols that sing of a faith-filled Christmas.  The left hand trips over itself, still.  The two hands refuse yet to plunk seamless and effortlessly with one another.  But, no matter, the songs are nostalgic and warming and heartfelt all the same.  And, instead of carols sung in an old-fashioned church, I play, when at last sitting down at the end of the day, and bring the old…back to me.  And the lace and burlap garland, with painted, wooden farm animals, I made this year, hangs and droops from the piano’s elegant uprightness.   I play in black and white film; images of It’s a Wonderful Life comes floating in and out of my head as the key notes lift and fall in memorable lyrics.  

But, I’m not the only one.  No, not my too-busy children, the rudeness of school sucking up all their time and extra-curricular space, but my husband.  The one dressed in Santa-red fleece PJ’s and red sweatshirt.  Does he know he looks like Christmas and Santa when he plays?  I watch his big, beloved man-hands and slender fingers dance across the old keys.  I fall more in love with him by the year.  By the day.  By the moment-by-moment by shared moment. 

And, while the kids play games on our old, red carpet rug, the one that we just now got out of the attic to join in on Christmas, my husband often strums his guitar of red to the strings of Christmas.  And, ‘round a tree and mantle glowing, kids playing on a rug that’s always meant “home,” (and graced the wood floors of our beloved house all the way back three moves ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan) Christmas and cozy sings soft in a country home tucked away.  

And he sits, playing just for me too.  As last night I again lay devoid of any fumes left on the couch, face in the direction of the room’s ambiance and entertainment, the glow of the tree.  He’s seated close to me, on the ottoman.  His voice singing soft and manly the carols he strums.  I am barely hanging on to consciousness; sleep is set on stealing me off.  In and out go the glow of lights on the tree.  In and out goes the image of man singing to his love.  In and out goes the voice, the carols, the soft strings strummed…

And too, the gardens of Williamsburg.  Those also popped up not but a day after the last piercing ones.  Pictures of my man all dressed in preppy sweater, kakis, and brown loafers.  Hands in pockets back to the camera.  He walks towards the arbor in the grounds of the Governor’s Mansion, a place we visited often just to roam its garden walks and swing its stately, garden rod-iron gates, to feel it all ours.  Because, it was, if felt.  At our fingertips, anyway.  But, not now.  Only when I close my eyes to remember, when I sleep half-dazed/half-forcing dream of being back but one more time.

But then again, we’ve found our own path here, haven’t we?  The long thicket pathway my husband arduously made way in, cutting low, dead, pine-limb after pine limb, that his family might yet have a forest enchantment out there among their vast country land and surrounding fields.  The thicket, that months before, had my kids and husband, back on the Yorktown battlefield, in their minds.  They were playing steal the lantern game, where one side attempts to sneak and plunder one of those lanterns my husband had pounded nails into tin forming pictures.  It was cold as ever that day, but my boys insisted on wearing one of those Colonial soldier costumes I had made for them while living in Virginia.   And, with shorts on my older boy too boot.  “It looks more old-fashioned, mom,” he had argued when I pleaded with him to at least put on pants to keep him warmer.  But, they were too enthralled in their game of old, out there in the hiding thicket, to even notice the cold, perhaps.  And, I watched from inside, as little boys in soldier costumes, last donned on in Virginia, were playing out the Yorktown scene right here in our backward; the older one, at one time, running out into the field and over the bluff, in the far-off horizon, for his planned sneak-attack with his teammate of dad.  

It was in this thicket that we adorned with Christmas cheer.  A few wreaths with big, red bows, bringing out the red of canoe, the red-painted cardinal on tree, the red strip and polka-dot of bird houses.  And, bling and bright!  We unveiled the path of cheer to our children in the pitch black of night.  A stretch of color and glow lined the pathway with those big, hearty globe-like lights.  My youngest boy, dressed in Santa cap, went on to count each and every fat light of red, blue, green, and orange.  And, I took in the glows of the country night.  The whole earth darkened, save for the moon above our silhouette  of home, the warm glow of Christmas tree seeping cozy from out our window, and these cheerful strand of lights.  We didn’t have the gardens of the Governor’s Mansion, but we had a new joy.  We had this lit-up, decked-out Christmas thicket that really was all ours.

And there was more new, drawing on the old…our old…our past.  Like my daughter coming home from school earlier than her brothers by an hour.  How we got into the habit of “our” time together, where she and I would take turns reading to one another, pages of The Little House on the Prairie.  Where, at first, I read with her and to her, just to speed up her reading to reach her goals at school, it soon became something I looked forward to.  This time with her.  To sit and listen of old times told in her sweet, reading voice, while I sipped hot tea in my fanciful tea-cup and saucer, all the while gazing at the glowing tree and mantle.  The one that housed all these past ornaments and memories.  Pictures of my kids as babes, as every year I make a new ornament out of that year’s Christmas card.  Ornaments from old schools, from first Christmas’s (together as husband and wife, and as one of my baby’s first Christmas on earth).  Ornate ornaments of figurines of the Fife and Drums or one of a fanciful Colonial, well-to-do lady.  The Governor’s Mansion, one of my love’s pudgy baby handprint.  Our tree crowded and covered with thick and rich memories as years stack upon years. 

And so it goes with this Christmas quilt.  Two of them, to be exact, as extra fabric shall not go to waste.  Not when vintage and old could be made out of it.  The kids at school, the house quiet and still, save for my busy-bee, quilt-making hands, I think how this quilt is like patchwork pieces of our pieced-together lives, each piece and pattern beautiful in its own right, all stitched together to make a piece even more stunning.  The old mixed with a little new, becoming the aged old once more, as more and more patchwork pieces are lived out and realized. 

I busted out a recipe, in one of my beaten-up cookbook binders from way back.  Where, I’d print out and store recipes to expand my array of scrumptious foods to prepare as my new role of wife, then mother.  Its printed out paper is all food-stained, smudged, and crinkly by now.  But, then again, that’s what makes the recipes tried and true.  I went about using up that butternut squash puree I had in the freezer with the search and find of this remembered recipe.  One I didn’t make in Virginia or in Illinois.  But, in that old, brick Tudor style home in Grand Rapids, MI.  And the making of it.  Trying to mix the orange-tinted dough with all those raisins and walnuts and cranberries threatening to spill back out of the dough mound.  It took me right back to all those years past, as did the taste.  How it was faintly remembered by my girl, new to my boys (as they never tried it before), yet devoured and loved by us all.  The old again, weaving its way back with the threads and times of new.

And, the coffee I’m gifting my husband for Christmas.  The kind we adored at our beloved Kingma’s Market we used to visit regularly when living in Grand Rapids.  It came in the mail just yesterday.  Aaaahhh the Holiday Blend.  This season seemed to be SCREAMING for it once again, though we hadn’t enjoyed it for some five years now.  Even before taking a big wiff of the coffee-beany, rolling, bumpy bag, before it came, I could smell the cranberry, chocolatey, nutty scent.  And the Snickerdoodle!  Two bags are twice as nice.  A gift to give, and likewise get to enjoy yourself.  Me, being the one to grind the beans and set the coffee-maker to percolate.  

I watch my hands dutiful work and labor over one quilt, then again, all over with the next.  The sun shines bright outside for the sixth or so day in a row.  It’s seeped past the windows, deep and warming to my soul.  It lights the hands that hold the needle and thick yarn, as it pokes and bites each square of fabric front, batting, and fabric back, to bind it all together with knot and tie.  These blankets won’t be used for warming, rather for decoration.  Their size seem as if I am preparing for newborn twins this Christmas.  Though still, I wonder daily about a having fourth child, countering the strong desire within me with the fact that I am already so full and blessed and busy with my happy, healthy, beautiful three.  “Perhaps, I am making this for You, baby Jesus,” I think to myself, as the hands of glow work steadily on.  ”The Wise Men bringing gifts of gold and frankincense, incense, and myrrh.   Won’t you like a blanket to warm you, on this cold night you shall soon be born?”

Born in an animal’s feeding trough of all places.  The reality of it, played out before me the other weekend, near choked me with thick emotion and touched my eyes to wet.  Bethlehem reenacted.  Loud beggars on the street, people dressed in robes weighing gold and silver and sliding business, fights brawling out, a town buzzing with life and strife and day to day turmoil.  Then, just beside all that pandemonium…You.  A little babe cradled in the arms of a young mother, right next to the donkeys and sheep, and unknowing world.  

You could have come in all your Majesty.  A regal place to lay your head.  Loud trumpets proclaiming your arrival; thousands gathered to learn when you’ve taken your very first breath.  

But, I adore how You came simple.  You came soft.  You came in the most humble way You could.  The only gift any one of us would ever need, offered to us meek and mild, amidst a world carrying on chaotically.    

These fingers.  They’re growing weary of pushing sharp pin through too much fabric.  Square after square after square.  My finger pads throb to show their protest of furthering on.  Too many pin pricks to cushions never meant to be struck.  I am an old soul. I am thirty-seven doing the job and passion of an eighty-year old.  Still, I wonder about the future of these afghans, as with all the crafts I do with every ounce of passion and love in me.  My children and my children’s children, may have much to remember me by some day.

But, of this Christmas Quilt.  I hope it stands to serve as a symbol of our patchwork lives.  Treasured piece by piece to make something of beauty.  

Beauty, these meek and mild, humble sinner’s hands, just might offer, with bowed-reverence, to a baby King just born.  

“It isn’t much.  A patchwork of a sinner’s, now redeemed one’s, life.  Might I offer it to warm the Newborn King?”

~

“What you need, is a thimble!” my mom said to me on the phone, the very next day, after The Christmas Quilt was written.  And, somehow, I found myself back in that Old Church Shoppe, with my feverish youngest boy, picking out another beanie baby for his cousin, as he had grown too fond over the little, Santa-hat dressed puppy one he was to gift to his cousin in a few days for Christmas.  He was deliberating over this doggie beanie baby replacement or that one, as I stood behind him, eyes roaming the nooks and crannies of the quaint shop as he debated.  

“Vintage thimbles,” the little basket just behind me read.   I scanned the scant array of thimbles, trying a few flowery ones on, deciding to trek downstairs to ask the owner if he had anymore.  He lead me to another basket, one brimming with the tiny tools of yesteryear’s quilted masterpieces and crafts.   Always before, I thought a thimble needless and assumed it awkward to use.  As if fingers of days gone by would require such an old tool, not fingers of present age.  Ones accustomed to technology, finger scrolling on Facebook, ones, as now, plunking down on computer keys.  Not those burdened with the hard tasks of scrubbing clothes on washboards, darning socks, and the like.   But, those quilts.  My ever sore finger tips after.  I realized a thimble’s purposefulness now.  Fingers are fingers.  Tender tips and pads of those lived centuries ago, just as vulnerable to sharp pin pricks, as with fingers of nowadays, busying themselves with centuries-old crafts.

I ran my fingers in the basket of plentiful, scooping deep in a feel of smooth stones, to turn the hidden over, unveiling them on top.  And, that’s when I saw it.  The vintage-looking thimble of a little girl and boy dressed in Christmas coats and days gone by; the boy carrying a small Christmas tree over his shoulder in a snowy, white backdrop.  How I love these old scenes.  I turned the thimble over to take in the back.  “Christmas 1981,” it read.  The year I was born.  “This one is it,” I thought, trying it on.  Its smooth, cool glass slipped just right over my fingertip.  A perfect fit.  

And, later that evening, as I was busily preparing fancy food for our own family’s mock Christmas Eve night, that day of only the 21^st, as on the true date of Christmas Eve we’ll be spending it with a house full of loved, cousins and grandparents, my older boy and girl busied themselves making our Count-Down-to-Christmas calendar, I had made years back, caught up to speed with the actual date and remaining days till Christmas.  A huge Christmas tree I had painted on the back of an old poster board.  A string of “garland” went from the very top, where a glittered star was painted, to the very bottom, where presents were painted and glued, piled and stacked.  The garland was the dates of December written in red glitter on brown cardstock.  And, on any specific date, is a Christmas activity to flip over and do on the back.  There’s never been a year with time to do them all, when we think to flip over the date, usually at supper.  “Play a game,” one reads.  “Put on a Christmas Puppet Show,” another one states.  I penned the activities years back, when still living in Illinois.

“What day is it?” my boy asked, down on the floor by the Count Down to Christmas Calendar, in the room just adjacent to my spot in the kitchen.  “The 21^st,” I called back, tired, already spent, but moving on to prepping the pizzas.

“Mom! It says, make a gift for baby Jesus!” he called with excitement, a dutiful messenger delivering a message.  

And, for a flash.  My heart caught.  My busy hands stilled.  And, a weary mama stopped in her tracks to take in what her boy just said.  

For, it seemed, something I penned forever ago for my children, was showing itself significant, right then…for me.

Because, it turned out, there was one activity on that Count-Down-To-Christmas calendar we did do.  Mama anyway.  

My thoughts immediately drifted back to those glowing hands on variegated, fabric squares.  In with the yarn, out.  Tie.  Tie.  Tie.  

A gift for Baby Jesus.  

“They really are quilts for you, aren’t they baby Jesus?” I thought it my heart.   A smile adorning the face of a weary mom rolling out pizza dough. 

Biography 

Leah Beaty is a seasoned author, and have dedicatedly written for some thirteen years now.  She have written upwards of 13 nonfiction Christian book for women, three of which she is holding out on for traditional publishing, but are completed.  She have also written numerous children's book and two middle grade chapter books.  Her printed books can be seen on her author page at amazon.com/author/leahbeaty .