Christmas in America

The adventurers who platted the town on the banks of the Ohio River were certain it would be a seat of great farms, a port for the burgeoning West, and a center of riches and influence. They gave its streets such proud names as Washington and Maryland and they called the village America. In the 1820s it grew fast. Then shifting sands moved the river channel and its commerce away, and a terrible epidemic swept the town. By 1835 its brave dream was dying; in the century after that, America, Ill. almost vanished.

Last week, as it prepared to celebrate Christmas, America was not much more than a scattering of houses along a mile of muddy road--the original river town had long since disappeared and its traces had been erased by plowing. America's farms were small; its citizens tilled a hundred, or thirty, or even five acres of soybeans, cotton or berries in a land where a thousand acres is the measure of a man of substance. But as the sleet swept in across the familiar fields, America was busy, contented and full of hope.

"The Coming of the King." The general store--a narrow, yellowing building which had been the railroad station in the days when trains still stopped at America--was in the center of America's Christmas rush. In a financial sense, it wasn't much of a store--its owner, Walter Schnaare, had long since given up trying to make a living out of it and had gotten a job upriver at Cairo (rhymes with faro). But it was, nevertheless, a great institution in America--a club and forum, and a source for almost anything America's housewives had forgotten to pick up in the city stores. Mrs. Schnaare was glad to keep it open a few hours every day just as a community service.

Its ancient, arched glass showcases and shelves provided hominy grits, black-eyed peas, meats, light bulbs, soft drinks, laundry soap, fruit-jar caps, boxes of W. E. Garrett & Sons Sweet Mild Snuff, Ramon's Pink Pills, leaf twist tobacco, spools of J. & P. Coats thread and a hundred other items. As America's citizens gossiped around the four-foot, coal-fired iron stove, the talk was full of Christmas doings.

Like most rural towns, America would eat well--homemade fruit cakes, mashed potatoes and gravy, roast turkey with oyster dressing. There would be presents under every Christmas tree. And in the America Christian Church, Mrs. Bertha Hayden held rehearsals all week long for the pageant of "The Coming of the King."

"The Shepherd of Israel." This year, because the Rev. Ben H. Cleaver is only able to serve on alternate Sundays, the farm folk of the congregation went to Christmas services a week early.

The bare little church, with its severe, varnished interior, its six plain glass windows, its 17 pews, was jammed, as always, with Americans and their children in their Sunday best. The tall, 68-year-old pastor took his text from Matthew 2:1: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem . . ." The minister laid down his Testament, and began his sermon:

"The Prophet Micah in the Old Testament called Bethlehem small compared with other towns; but it had a notable history, even before his prophecy that from it would come 'The Shepherd of Israel' . . . The wise men of Matthew's account may have been reluctant to leave the capital city, Jerusalem, at the direction of the scribes, and journey eight miles further to this modest village. But though they left Herod and his palace behind them, they went on and found indeed the genuine Prince of the House of David . . .

"The great things of truth and life cannot be measured by walls and towers, square miles and boulevards, throngs of men and women or thunderous salutes from artillery. Not the place, or the grandeur, but the honest, open heart of those who will receive Him, can mark the birth and the rule of this redeeming Savior, God's gift to the world."

As the families of America headed home after the closing hymn, they looked like the people of many another congregation across the land--people with steady faith in themselves and the world in which God had placed them.

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