Christmas is Coming, The Goose is Getting . . . Flat?

Thoughts of Christmas dinner probably call to mind traditional foods: a stuffed, roasted turkey with all the trimmings; a pineapple glazed ham, studded with cloves; a festive crown roast of pork wreathed in a string of fresh cranberries. Few people, I imagine, picture themselves either serving or eating Christmas road kill.

Several years ago the beloved Swede and I lived near a friend whose husband traveled frequently for work. It seemed she often found herself in the most unlikely predicaments when he was out of town, leaving her alone with the kids. Once she called, asking my husband to come over and rescue her dog which had gotten trapped under the porch, behind a snow bank. Another time her kids were pretending to be horses, jumping over hurdles they had built in the living room, when her son fell and broke his arm causing it to dangle at unnatural angles. She asked if I would come over and stay with her other kids while she took him to the emergency room.

So it came as little surprise when our friend called one day, near Christmas, to say her husband was out of town and she needed some help. She had accidentally run over one of her pet geese in the driveway with her minivan.

My friend lived on a lovely, country horse property with a small, idyllic pond in front of the house. She’d purchased several geese from friends who raised them for food, thinking their presence would add a touch of charm to the little pond. Each time she pulled in the driveway toward her house, however, the geese would charge toward her van, attempting to bite the tires. One day, one of the geese made a fatal miscalculation when charging toward the van and my friend found herself with a freshly killed goose in her driveway.

Not knowing the proper way to dispose of a dead goose, my friend thought about putting it in the freezer so her husband could take care of it when he got home. Instead she called my husband, the mighty hunter, and asked what he would do. Realizing the goose had been freshly killed, and bred for food in the first place, the Swede said, “We’ll take it.”

He brought it home, plucked that bird, and put it in the freezer. And on Christmas day we enjoyed roast goose with apricot and cornbread stuffing. It was delicious.

Years later, our friends introduced us to several of their acquaintances. It didn’t take long for them to make the connection, “Oh! You’re the ones who ate the pet goose for Christmas!”

“Yes,” we responded. “Yes. We are those hillbillies.”

Our story of the road-kill Christmas goose has been told and re-told, and we continue to meet folks who have heard it second-hand. And I’m convinced that, one day, the husband found himself on a business trip, seated on a plane next to a writer who worked our story into an episode of The Office. Watch the clip, decide for yourself, and then tell me, “Do you think our little story was the inspiration for Dwight Schrute?”

So, what will you be serving for Christmas dinner this year?

On the Eve of a Hunt

When I was a child, I often came home in the fall to find dead deer hanging from my swing set. Western Pennsylvania, where I grew up, is hunting country and my father was a meat cutter. He used to process deer for local hunters, and many gave him packages of venison in return. Venison burger, steak, and bologna were staples of my childhood diet.

I always assumed the first day of hunting season was a national holiday as all the schools and many local businesses were closed. I didn’t know there were people who didn’t hunt. As I grew into my cynical teen years, however, I began to announce my distaste for deer meat.  I started regarding hunters as camouflage-wearing rednecks and hillbillies.

So of course I grew up and married one.

New Englanders, in general, cast a cool eye toward hunters and hunting. Most seem to prefer the dignity and civility of buying meat at the local Stop and Shop, that which has been processed in mass slaughterhouses and packaged in Styrofoam. Many in the Northeast are proud to trace their ancestry to the landing of the Mayflower. Yet these same folks seem to forget how Squanto and his merry band of Wampanoag saved their forefathers’ puritanical butts from starvation by teaching them how to roast a loin of venison over an open fire. In our quiet New England neighborhood, my husband and I keep his hunting activities to ourselves.

My husband is a hunter in the same way he is both an engineer and a Scandinavian. It would be easier to stop a mariner from going to sea or separate a teenager from his cell phone than it would be to keep my husband from the woods in the fall. Hunting is not merely something my husband does; the need to hunt seems encoded in his DNA.

I recognize it in him as the summer starts drawing to a close, the far-off look he gets as though hearing a siren call from the local Cabela’s. He begins disappearing into the woods after dinner, stealing away with his mistress, his Matthews hunting bow. Packages begin arriving filled with things like skin care products designed to mask human scent. The garage becomes a staging area for sorting, testing, and organizing all manner of hunting equipment, some of which defies description and my ability to comprehend.

My husband brings to the sport of hunting the same level of planning, care, discipline he does in every area of his life. Not only does he want to increase his chance of success and fill our freezer for the winter, he recognizes there is something of the sacred in taking the life of an animal for food. The idea of shedding blood that others might live has been offensive since Adam and Eve were first clothed in animal skins. Few things torment my husband like the knowledge that an animal died slowly and painfully because a hunter made a careless shot. He is committed to ethical hunting and to mastering his sport, working to make shots which are efficient and swift.

My husband enjoys every aspect of hunting, from the planning stage to the hours of sitting still in a tree stand to the preparation of gourmet venison dishes. He butchers his deer with my father’s knife, the one he used back in his days at meat cutting school in Toledo, Ohio. In so doing, my husband both carries on a family tradition and honors my father’s memory.  He prepares cuts of meat with the kind of care which optimizes flavor and minimizes waste. Though I claimed as a teenager not to like deer meat, what that man can do with some olive oil, garlic, homemade peach chutney, and tenderloin of venison is pure magic. Because my husband, like Nimrod of old, is a mighty hunter, I eat local, organic, and well.

So on the eve of a new archery season, I want to wish my husband an enjoyable, safe, and successful hunt. After all, he’s the best-looking redneck hillbilly I know.

What Happens at Hunting Camp

What follows is a rough approximation of a conversation from the other night:

(Beloved teenage son has spent the afternoon hiking with buddies)

Dad:  Make sure you get a shower when you get home and check yourself for ticks.

Son:  I never can find them.

Dad:  I usually feel them crawling on me.  Felt two of them crawling on me when I was waiting to get a shot at a longbeard out in Kansas.  R (the young man whom the beloved Swede took on his first turkey hunt) lifted his shirt after a morning of hunting.  Asked if I had any tweezers.  Must have had at least three of them attached to him.  I was going to go look for some tweezers and then remembered I'd seen some in R's first aid kit.

(Editorial note:  That would be the first aid kit the beloved Swede was shaking his head and laughing about, thinking R's mother was being overly protective in sending him off to hunting camp.)

Dad:  I remembered seeing them (the tweezers) when I opened the kit looking for antiseptic after the bobcat jumped on D (one of the hunting guides).

Me:  Bobcat?  There was a bobcat?

Dad:  I didn't tell you about that?

Me:  I think I would have remembered hearing about a bobcat attack.

Dad tells the story.  It wasn't really an attack, he says.  Just a bobcat who happened to mistake a grown man making turkey calls for the real thing, leaving D with claw marks on both his scalp and leg.

Thank heaven there was no real danger at hunting camp, though.  Nor the need for over-protective moms to pack first aid kits.

Isaac On the Altar

The beloved teenage son, after years of being homeschooled and attending private school, has piles of scholarship money sitting at his feet.  And he's not sure he wants it.  Uncertainty, indecision, and fear follow him about, clouding his thinking.  His gifts and talents are held in tension by the way his brain holds onto and processes information.  And this is all part of His loving Father's design and plan for him.

And he talks about the army.  And I picture drill sergeants yelling and bullets flying and soldiers hoping to come home safely from dangerous desert places.  And I weep.

And I think of how many times I've stood and wept at Memorial Day parades, watching the flags waving, watching the veterans march by.  I remember how many times I've spoken up in support of the military, expressing my gratitude for their willingness to sacrifice and put their lives in harm's way.

Their lives.  Not my son's.

And I hear the voice of his school principal saying that perhaps the Lord is asking me to put my Isaac on the altar and trust in God's provision.  And I remember hearing that story as a young girl in Sunday School, watching my sainted teacher act it out.  Pretending to march up Mount Moriah, carrying the wood.  Placing the imaginary son on the altar.  Looking to see the ram, caught by its horns.  It was a powerful story then.  I never thought I'd be asked to live it.

And a friend, an army chaplain calls him while on vacation with his family and talks to him and encourages him.  And my son brightens, expressing gratitude for the gifts of time and encouragement.  He sees the possibility of challenge and success and the opportunity to test himself and become a man.

I tell my brother about the phone call and say, "Wouldn't our dad be proud of his grandson?" he who proudly squeezed himself into his army uniform and marched in his hometown Memorial Day parade, year after year.  And my brother tells me the story (how is it that I never heard this until now?) of the army chaplain who befriended our father, he who as a young boy used to walk past churches, wondering what went on in there.  And that chaplain sowed the seed of the gospel.  And it took root.

And I know that God is in this and He will provide.  And I hear His voice saying, "Never will I leave you.  Never will I forsake you."  And He means it.

And I am so grateful.  The list of God's gifts, great and small, continues:



230.  The men and women of our armed services.
231.  The families who love them and let them go.
232.  The blessings of being in the body of Christ--what our pastor called, "the privileges of membership."
233.  Seeing the men in the church speaking truth and grace and encouragement to my son.
234.  Witnessing the baptism of a new convert--a hard-core atheist transformed by the gospel, wooed out of the kingdom of darkness and welcomed into the kingdom of light.  Being reminded, once again, that it is all, all true.
235.  Being surprised, once again, by the first chorus of spring peepers.

236.  The snow fountain which blooms so briefly but so beautifully each spring.

237.  Swans on the reservoir.  Yes, they are fierce and aggressive, but so lovely to look at.

238.  Childhood friends.

239.  Learning of a saint triumphant who has earned his rest.  Reading the legacy of the lives he touched.  Knowing he had done what God had put him on this earth to do.

240.  Faithful Sunday School teachers.

241.  The ministry of CareNet.  Lives transformed by the gospel.

242.  The Pirates winning their first game of the season, reawakening memories of my dad.

243.  The beloved Swede, reaching out to a young man being raised by a single mom, sharing his love of hunting.
244.  The hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, God-fearing farmer who runs the hunting camp and finds joy in introducing young people to the sport.

245.  The young man shaking like a leaf after getting his first turkey.