Gram's Christmas Punch
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
—1 John 3:1a
Cookies star in many a holiday gathering, but Christmas will always taste like Gram’s punch to me. My brother and sister and I would pile into the back seat of the car, and my parents would drive the five minutes down to Gram and Pap’s house. We sat in their front room, the “parlor” which they only used at Christmas. The overstuffed couch looked and felt stiff; a fake tabletop tree sat on an end-table pushed in front of the window; and waves of heat rose from the floor vents. Some years our cousins and aunt and uncle would be there, too, and the mix of voices could get pretty loud. No one waited until someone stopped talking; you just raise your voice slightly to be heard over the end of another’s sentence. Point and counterpoint, the women’s higher voices overlapping in waves, with the men’s lower voices providing short, staccato comments that usually ended in general laughter. I can still remember how each voice sounded, even now, long after my grandparents and my big, bluff uncle have passed away.
As a child, though, I’d shift uncomfortably on the couch and pretend to be interested in the conversation. We’d “oh” and “ah” over the lovely sweater that Pap gave Gram for Christmas, and hear the story of exactly which store she got it at and when. At some point, we could count on the adults having a long meandering conversation about how somebody in town was related to somebody else in town, including exactly which house they used to live in, “you know, across from where the [insert defunct business] used to be.” My dad and grandparents could give directions to any place in town by what used to be there.
But, really, through all that conversation, us kids were just waiting for the punch and cookies. At some point, Gram would stand up decisively and say “well, I guess it’s time.” She walked back to the kitchen, and Mom and Aunt Gail would follow. One of them would bring out several trays of homemade Christmas cookies—but you had to go into the kitchen for the punch.
Gram served from a real glass punch bowl, filled to the brim with pale orange liquid, with bits of sherbet fizzing and floating on top. To us kids, that giant punch bowl seemed bottomless. Ladle after ladle of sweet, fizzy goodness went into our paper cups. We drank until we could drink no more. We knew that once Christmas time was over, we’d get no punch until next Christmas. So, maybe one more cup, just before we left
The bounty of my grandmother’s Christmas punch reminds me of the bounty that God lavishes on us. Gram sacrificed a little time and a lot of orange sherbet for her beloved children and grandchildren. But Jesus gave up all for us—His life to conquer sin and death, His glory to be with us on earth. Often, we get mired in the muck of life here on earth—sickness, violence, temptation, depression. We feel beaten and broken, undeserving of the sweetness of God’s love. But God has already proven that He loves us, through Jesus’s sacrifice. And He wants to give us all things: forgiveness, peace, hope, and love overflowing.
As we celebrate Emmanuel, God with Us, remember that God is not stingy with His love and grace. God delights in pouring more and more into our cup. Like my grandmother filling those little paper cups over and over again, Jesus holds nothing back. He offers us the cup of salvation, the cup of forgiveness, the cup of joy, the cup of His own Presence. We only have to receive it, and drink.
And somehow, I think it tastes a little bit like Gram’s punch.