By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

This is the story of an interfaith holiday miracle.

And, yes, I know! I know! Declaring something to be an “interfaith miracle” places me on thin ice this winter. I know that we need to avoid trying to mash the customs of our faiths together in a way that distorts the treasures we have inherited in our unique branches of religious heritage. For half a century as a journalist covering religious diversity, I have written annual stories explaining that Hanukkah is not “the Jewish Christmas.”

So, with that caveat, on with the story.

This year, I am astonished by the creative generosity of a dear Jewish friend—Rusty Rosman, the author of Two Envelopes—whose wisdom about the aging process has moved her to “adopt” my wife and I. Rusty has even met our family’s matriarch, the cofounder of a historic family dairy farm in mid Michigan. Each week when I talk with Rusty about her ongoing work as an author, Rusty takes a moment to ask me about our “Mom” and Mom’s ongoing challenges as a frail, 97-year-old, fiercely independent woman trying to continue living (alone now) in the original farm house.

These days, when “Mom” looks out her windows across the vast farm that’s still a part of our family, she often sees the next two generations of farmers laboring out there—driving tractors, perhaps, or seeing to the cattle. She loves living at the heart of her farm—and she can’t abide the idea of moving into a more comfortable assisted living center. However, the challenges of keeping her living like that are enormous, something that all of us in her extended family and circle of friends work to enable for her.

That brings us to Christmas, the biggest holiday of the year in our family, complete with the annual “homecoming” to the farm. Yup, you can summon images from your favorite Hallmark holiday movie and that’s what we all work to engineer each year.

A decade ago, my wife and I became Mom’s official “Santa’s elves,” working with her to think of a single universal gift that she can buy and that we can help her to wrap for each of the dozen or so folks (individuals or couples) on her Christmas list. In past years, we’ve come up with universal ideas like a gift box we curated of “Michigan products,” or a portable car re-charging device that was a big hit with the recipients, or (during COVID) a countertop sanitizing appliance. This year, my wife and I had a great idea of having a professional-quality photo of Mom as the family matriarch taken outdoors with the farm’s signature corn crop. We would have this iconic photo printed, matted and framed in a beautiful way to adorn the walls of each of the dozen recipients. Then, we hit a huge snag. This idea of a portrait of her—alone as the matriarch—awakened memories of Dad, the original farmer and now of blessed memory. For weeks, anxieties over this idea stalled the production until we blew the deadline to have such professional work finished in time.

Mom wept when we told her about the missed deadline.

“Well, there’s still time for you could get gift cards in holiday envelopes, this year,” we said. “But we don’t have another universal gift idea for something in a wrapped box that we could pull off by Christmas. Over the past decade, we’ve used up pretty much every great gift-in-a-box idea. We’re out of ideas. And out of time.”

For days, there was weeping across the telephone line in our daily phone calls.

Mom tried to explain why this was such a tragedy for her. “Wrapped packages under my tree for each one of my loved ones as they come home to the farm—that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. I’m 97

and this will be the first Christmas that I haven’t had wrapped gifts under the tree for everyone.”

“Well, by next year—” we began.

“Next year?!” she said in deep sigh that reminded us: She’s well aware of the treasure of each new day that she’s alive. She doesn’t think in terms of “next year.” That’s sad to say, but we all know it’s true.

Then a miracle happened.

OK! OK, I know, that’s a “line” I’m stealing from the Hanukkah story. When the Maccabees reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem, they found one little pot of oil that wouldn’t last to keep the temple light burning properly—but: “Then a miracle happened.” That oil burned for eight days. I hope that our Jewish readers will forgive me for co-opting that line.

Rusty embodied that miracle. This year, she decided to give a Christmas gift to my wife and I to celebrate our more-than-a-year of close friendship. She ordered a box from Amazon to be delivered—but made a mistake and had it shipped to her own home! So, Rusty packed that box into her car and drove half an hour to personally deliver that box to our door. Inside was a gift set of various varieties of popcorn from Amish Country Popcorn.

This all took place on the very day that a handful of our desperate family members got together in a conference call to discuss how to help lift Mom’s spirits—now that her “elves” had hit a brick wall. Her vision of a perfect Christmas on the farm was falling apart. There would be no wrapped presents under her tree. A handful of holiday envelopes, filled with gift cards, just didn’t fit her Norman Rockwell vision for Christmas Day.

As we brainstormed, our own adult “kids” had a few good ideas. One was a special Christmas ornament with a photograph of the family farm custom-printed on it—but, alas, there was no time to arrange that by December 25. Another was a wonderful gift to share with all of the family’s dogs (we all love dogs)—but, alas, we remembered that one person’s dog had just died and such a gift would be a heartbreaker for all of us on Christmas. On and on we went. Nothing seemed to click.

A universal gift for a dozen recipients is tough to find!

As we were talking, Amy and I were in the process of munching on a bowl of popcorn we had made from Rusty’s gift set. I lifted a handful of buttery kernels—and the light bulb finally flashed! We could follow Rusty’s example and get a dozen Amish Country Popcorn gift sets to wrap for Mom to arrange around her tree. Once wrapped in colorful paper with bows, these boxed gift sets truly would dress up her tree in a fashion worthy of Rockwell nostalgia.

We checked via Amazon and there was plenty of time to have them delivered, wrap them and tuck them under the farmhouse tree.

“This is a brilliant idea—in so many ways!” I said.

“Oh, yeah! One reason: It’s corn—what a perfect farming theme!” my daughter said.

“And it’s gluten free,” my wife said, thinking of one niece who can only eat gluten-free foods. “Everyone can enjoy this.”

“So, it certainly checks the ‘universal’ box,” I said. “And remember? Dad, when he was alive, loved popcorn—so we can truly say this gift is a reminder of our beloved patriarch, too,” I said.

“You know, because Dad loved popcorn and we always had that as a snack—that’s the first word I learned to spell as a pre-schooler—P-O-P-C-O-R-N. Yeah, Dad loved it,” my wife said.

So, as I publish this story, a dozen gift sets of Amish Country Popcorn are wending their way to the “elves” wrapping table and eventually to a display of colorful gifts arranged around the farmhouse tree—in the same corner of the same room where gifts have been piled each Christmas Day for more than 70 years.

And that Christmas miracle was all thanks to my Jewish friend and her tireless insistence on getting that box to our front door on the same day our family Christmas conference took place.

This truly is a gift that truly keeps on giving.

Because, now, I have just given to you, dear reader, the gift of this story.

And you can give this gift—or a generous idea like it—away this year to someone you love.

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Care to learn more?

EDITOR’s AFTERWORD: If you’re a true Norman Rockwell aficionado, then you know that Rockwell preferred to paint illustrations of frustrated families preparing for Christmas. In one of his most famous Yuletide illustrations, he painted a Dad hopelessly tangled up in Christmas lights; in another, he showed a Mom and Dad trying to finish decorating the top of spindly tree using a ladder as a racing pair of family dogs comes perilously close to crashing everything to the floor. You get the idea. While we may think of Rockwell’s images as celebrating ideals, more often he pointed out our frustrations and foibles—like our family’s situation this year.

So, in the end, this story is a Rockwell Christmas tale.

Then, if you want to learn more about Rusty, get a copy of her book Two Envelopes: What You Want Your Loved Ones to Know When You Die.

You also can visit Rusty Rosman’s website to learn about her ongoing schedule as she continues to help groups of men and women across the country engage with these issues we all will encounter someday. And we can assure you: We know from our experiences over the past year that, if you “book” her to visit your group, Rusty will be a delightful visitor who you’ll never forget.

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