"Hark, the Herald Pygmies Sing"

It has been said Christmas in the Pacific Northwest is a gift wrapped in green. Although we’re blessed here with an abundance of fir trees and evergreens, many of us still dream about a Christmas of white. More often than not, however, we get a Christmas of just plain wet. So it was one Christmas Day a few years back.

Although wet, our Christmases here are as merry as the white variety and this particular wet Christmas for me had been a day spent with family and friends. As far as I knew all the gifts had already been given and unwrapped, and all the festivities had come to a close. But I hadn’t anticipated the festivities waiting for me back home.

The automatic light flipped on as we pulled into the driveway, adding to the glow from a thousand colored lights lining the house. Although home looked inviting in the dark and stormy night, the short trip from car to backdoor seemed a daunting task. I tucked my head under my coat and made a run for it.

A small herd of pygmy goats, about a dozen of my own and another dozen or two of my housemate’s, live in a simple wood barn tucked behind the house. They often greet anyone who approaches with a bleating chorus, half to greet and half to scold for being away. It was dark, it was wet, and the goats had missed their Christmas dinner. So their scolds that evening fell especially harsh. I had intended to ignore their complaints for the moment. Once inside I could don more fitting apparel and tend to the goats’ holiday feast. But during that particular moment in the rain, I just wanted to get indoors.

“Did you hear that?”

Of course I could hear it, anyone who didn’t hear the cater-wailing goat chorus should have been pronounced deaf.

“When is Bree due?”

“Next month.”

I felt a little irritated by what seemed an irrelevant question. Bree was one of my pregnant does and I knew she had a good three weeks to go before kidding. At the moment I was too wet and too cold to entertain any other possibilities. But suddenly from underneath the steady drone of the goat chorus I could hear smaller voices, higher pitched and more staccato. Everything I had been carrying landed on the back porch and I made a dash for the barn.

Two tiny figures dimly reflected the lights from the porch and the colored decorations as they maneuvered through the deep mud just outside the barn door. A row of curious white noses watched from inside the barn. Once I managed the presence of mind to plug in the barn light, Bree could be seen standing in the rain, shaking and uncertain. Two newborns circled her, very dirty and very wet.

I scooped up the babies and put them inside my coat, calling for towels. As if she hadn’t been agitated enough before, now their mother ran in hysterical circles. Unable to see her babies, she became blind to the rain and the mud. I held my coat tight around the two newborn kids and fought their mother until I had securely latched us all inside the barn.

I held the babies close to my body, sitting on the barn floor wet and muddy, rocking them and hoping to make up for their neglected birth. They struggled against being held at first, calling back and forth with their mother, but eventually became content in their warm new nest. Their mother remained worried and kept a close eye on me, but eventually accepted the new arrangement. I stayed with them through the rest of the evening to make sure the little boy and little girl were dry and nursing.

In ancient times a certain famous baby’s birth was announced by a chorus of angels. He was born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lay in a manger. He was attended by three wise men. In my Christmas reenactment many years later, two baby goats were announced by a chorus of pygmy goats, wrapped in a swaddling coat and visited by a not-so-wise man who now pays closer attention to breeding dates.

For some, Christmas may be a gift wrapped up in white and for others Christmas is a gift wrapped up in green. That year, for me, Christmas was a gift wrapped up in mud.