Peach Crisp for Christmas

This morning Claire Nathan caught her husband, Randall, eating cookes for breakfast, along with his diabetes pill. "What are you doing?" she exclaimed. "We don't have any pie," he explained. Anyone else would have gotten a lecture or a whack with a wooden spoon. With him, though, she thought it was cute and couldn't wait to tell her women friends. There is the secret to a happy marriage somewhere in that story.

Claire is famous for her cooking. She finds that the days don't start as early or last as long now that she's past 70, though, so she has to cut down on her cooking. Her Christmas prep "drop" list now includes not only a Yule log but blueberry coffee cake for Christmas brunch. She has decided to make applesauce bread instead. It's easier and takes less time. Besides, her husband and grandchildren will eat anything she puts before them, and she doesn't really care what anyone else thinks.

Except maybe Pastor Patty...

Pastor Patty has this crazy notion that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birthday, so gifts should be to Jesus, like giving a poor family a goat through Heifer International, or a toilet for a Habitat home. Claire believes in that sort of giving, and does it, but she also believes that Christmas is for giving everyone she loves anything and everything they might want or need. She loves Pastor Patty, for her generous nature, and for her bulldogged determination to do good, so she wanted to give her a present. What, though, can you give to someone who eschews personal gifts?

Claire remembers too well the gift the congregation gave her and Rev. Nathan the first Christmas after they married. It was a 3D picture of the last supper. When it was lighted,wine sloshed in the glasses, and the eyes of not only Jesus but all the disciples followed her as she went across the room. "Just like men," she would hiss."They need some women in that picture. Who do they think baked that bread and stomped those grapes, anyway?"

For a woman who is a preacher and a wife and a mother, Saturday night supper is both a distraction and an anxiety. So Saturday afternoon, Claire took a loaf of her famous dill bread, and one of her famous shepherd's pies, and a Jell-O salad, and her famous peach crisp to Patty's pasonage. "Here's a gift that won't gather dust," she said. Patty was in her study, preparing Sunday morning's sermon, so her husband and children helped Claire carry her gift into the parsonage kitchen. They seemed especially intrigued by the peach crisp.

When Patty came out of her study, basking in the glow of a sermon finally finished, she caught her husband and kids eating peach crisp. "Why in tarnation are you eating peach crisp before supper time?" she cried. "Mrs. Nathan didn't bring any pie," they said.

Pastor Nathan (Retard) thought about what his wife had done and decided that if he were still preaching, he would say that the proper gift is the gift of your own identity. After all, that was the gift God gave at Christmas. And if you're a famous cook instead of a famous Creator...