It's Christmas Time in the Jungle!

For those of you who feel sorry for poor little missionary kids at Christmas time - don't. They're just as happy with a broomstick and a handful of rocks as they would be with a Thomas the Train set. I speak from experience.

My parents worked in a very remote area in the middle of the jungle so my older brother and I were sent off to boarding school for most of the year. We got to come home for about a month for Christmas break. From the windows of the Cessna airplane we would see the whole village turned out for the occasion, all dressed in their finest. Among the thronging crowd would be two white specks, also known as our parents. After one swoop of the airstrip to clear off the goats, we would land.

Soon after our arrival, Christmas preparations were in full swing. First on the list was the fabrication of the Christmas tree. A few cotton balls glued onto a dead tree branch usually sufficed. Stringing popcorn was out of the question because it would have disappeared overnight. All the rats and roaches would have enjoyed this delicious feast. A few Christmas lights were strung that could be illuminated whenever the solar panel produced enough energy.

Making Christmas cookies was another matter altogether. Since my mom grew up in the States, she had a higher expectation of what Christmas should be like. What would have taken two hours to do in the States took a whole day in the jungle. And making cookies was no exception. The bugs had to be sifted out of the flour, the eggs gathered from the chicken house, sugar had to be crushed into powdered sugar, etc. etc. It was dangerous to make any kind of cookie that was supposed to hold its shape. The Magi on the camel would end up looking like a frog smoking a pipe and my mom would be very distressed. Coconut and Brazil nuts were our only option for recipes that called for nuts. This is where we kids came in handy. I was especially good at shinnying up coconut trees to get the coconuts and my brother would cut them open with a machete. We also enjoyed terrorizing the chickens while gathering the eggs. All this to make cookies. What more could a child want?

The pilot's wife had given me Charlie Brown's Christmas on a cassette tape which I listened to religiously. I was never quite sure what was happening, but it was entertaining nonetheless. It wasn't until recently that I discovered it is actually a movie. Now it makes more sense.

Somehow my mom had managed to get an accordion into the village. This instrument came out of its hiding place about once a year to play us Christmas songs. All the tribal people would be in our house by the time the first few notes blared across the village. They would stand around giggling with amusement while my mom would play her favorite: “It's Christmas Time in the City”. None of us knew the words and it was just as well because they wouldn't have made much sense to us anyway.

We always had a big Christmas party with the whole village. It was a major event with lots of food and games. My parents would make mountains of popcorn and the women would beat the men in tug of war every year.

Somehow my parents managed to get us Christmas presents. They just kind of magically appeared and we knew for sure that Santa had nothing to do with it. He wouldn't have survived a second in the jungle. Rudolf would have been torn apart by a jaguar and Santa would be squatting in the jungle with dysentery and eventually suffocate in the heat. My brother was usually given some form of gun or knife. He was three when he got his first machete so every year he graduated to a more lethal weapon. My dad was very good at making things out of wood. One of my earliest memories is getting a doll bed he made. It came with a tiny little mattress and sheets that my mom had laboriously sewn on her treadle sewing machine. My brother and I brought presents from town. The expected gift from anyone who had recently been to the city was a can of Pringles for each person. We would eat one Pringle a day and by the end of the can the chips would be so stale they were limp. And of course, it was always nice to get a pet monkey or parrot.

My mom would do her best to be true to the traditional American Christmas dinner. Instead of green beans or broccoli we would have fried okra or collard greens – the only vegetables that would grow in our garden because they were basically weeds. The closest thing to a potato was a dark purple root that was as slimy as a slug but with enough butter and salt it was edible. And poor Henry the rooster would be carried to the chopping block. He had crowed under the house one too many times. But even in death he got his revenge. After several hours in the pressure cooker and another one in the oven, he was still too tough to eat. A jungle turkey was a much better option. On one occasion the turkey was discovered to have some brightly colored eggs inside of it. I wrapped the eggs in a blanket and sat on them in the hopes of producing baby turkeys. It was a short-lived endeavor, one that I never tried again.

And even after Christmas was officially over we still had lots to do. The chickens had to be consoled at the loss of their communal husband, the dog had burrowing parasites to be picked out of its feet, the sheep had to be ridden and our new presents had to be put to use. Little did we know that children in other parts of the world were languishing indoors because of the inclement weather, waiting in vain for a fat old man to come down the chimney and bring them cheap plastic toys made in China. Even if we had known what we were missing we would have felt very lucky indeed.

Merry Christmas!