The Old One’s Dream

It would be best, I decided, to set the alarm clock to go off at 4:00 AM. That way, I could get up and get my Christmas turkey stuffed and into the oven by 5:00. It would be done and even have time to cool, long before the children and grandchildren came flocking in at noon. Turkeys slice better after they’ve cooled a bit.

I wound the clock good and tight and settled back on my pillows. I would read myself to sleep. There was still a couple of stories left in the Sherlock Holmes book I’d been reading off and on since Thanksgiving. Or, perhaps I could just listen to the sound of the sleet peppering against the window panes. That should lull me right off.

I read awhile. Then, listened to the sleet. Then, read some more. After a time, the sleet turned to snow. Ah, how fortunate. A white Christmas is always a delight. The grandchildren would probably build a snowman.

The hallway clock struck midnight.

What a great thing it would be if someone would invent a clock that had a soothing mechanism in it which, when properly set, would send us off to dreamland the instant we were ready to go. Maybe it could even be devised in such a way that we would be able to pick out and plan the dreams that would come floating through our minds.

I put the mystery book aside. Those stories were nothing to be reading on a night like this. Christmas Eve is a holy night. I should be reading the Christmas Story in the Bible -- about how the Christ child was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. No matter that I knew that story by heart. I should read it again. I wonder if it was snowing in Bethlehem that night.

If I could plan a dream to dream, I would make it be in Bethlehem. And I would be an aged woman living there. Every morning I would go and sit beside the village well and talk with all the women as they came to till their water jars. I wouldn’t have to have a name. They could just call me “the Old One.”

I almost knew what they’d say. About what I would answer. It was Myra, the innkeeper’s wife, who began speaking first.

“Good morning, Old One. How are you today?”

“Very well, Myra, thank you. Good morning, Ruth, Sarah, Lydia, all of you. Ah, my daughters, this is another beautiful day Jehovah our God has sent to Bethlehem. This may be the day the Great King will come.”

“My, my Old One,” said Myra, “that’s what you say every morning.”

“Yes, that’s what I say.”

“Old One, you are very, very old, and wise. Some in the village say you are a prophetess.”

“No, no, Myra, I’m no prophetess. I’m just very aged and can remember things told and re-told by our fathers. Things handed down.”

“Would it be too much to ask you to tell one more time about the Great King? You know -- how He is going to rule on the throne of David and all that? My cousin Rhoda, here wants to hear it. Rhoda is from Jerusalem.”

Myra brought her kinswoman over to me and we talked a bit. She said she had come to Bethlehem to be enrolled in the tax census that was going on.

“Ah,” I said, “that tax enrollment! Here of late, Bethlehem is crowded with people like you who’ve had to come to register for Caesar Augustus and his tax scheme. I didn’t realize there were so many people descended from David.”

Then the woman from Jerusalem mentioned seeing a great camel caravan from the East, headed toward Bethlehem. They were foreign people, she said, not descendants of King David.

“Old One,” Myra whispered, “don’t forget you’re going to tell about the coming of the Great King!”

“I’m not forgetting.”

“The signs. Tell about the signs,” she whispered. And the other women moved closer.

“There are three main signs,” I began. “These signs will reveal our Messiah King to us. First, His star will appear.

“’Behold there shall come a Star out of Jacob ... a Sceptre (or Great King) shall rise in Israel.’ That is from far back in our ancient sacred writings.

“The second sign is that He will be born in Bethlehem, the city of David, and be a descendant of the house of David. And, rule a kingdom that shall have no end. That was prophesized by Isaiah and Micah, in days of old.

“The third sign is that other kings will come and bow down before our new Holy King sent by Jehovah. Our ancestor David wrote that prophecy himself. ‘The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. ... To him shall be given the gold of Sheba.’”

I paused to catch my breath. The women waited for me to talk on.

“My daughters, I would tell you more; but the morning is passing on, and there is work waiting at home for each of us. Let us meet here beside the well in the cool of the evening, shortly before sunset. It is in my heart to tell you all that I know.”

Over in the afternoon Myra came by my house to ask if! had any cloth that could be torn into strips to use as swaddling bands. Of course I didn’t have any kind of cloth, but I found an old soft nightgown and we ripped that apart.

Myra explained that a weary young couple from Nazareth had just arrived for the census and that the inn was so crowded that they would have to spend the night in the stable, and, that she knew that by the time the sun went down the beautiful young woman would bring forth her firstborn. And the poor thing didn’t have any swaddling clothes to wrap the baby in.

It was hard to know exactly when I should walk back to the well, for I couldn’t tell whether or not the sun was setting. There had suddenly appeared in the sky the biggest, most brilliant star I had ever seen. Never, in my whole life, had I beheld such a star. It was shining straight down on Bethlehem. Why, I could see to walk as clearly as if it were mid-day.

I never reached the village well. Just as I was passing the inn, a band of shepherds came romping along, singing and shouting and declaring that angels from heaven had come down on the hillside and told them to hurry to Bethlehem and find Christ their Lord, “born this day in the city of David.”

“Come with us, Old One,” cried the leader. And I was swept along in their midst.

“The angels said we’d find him ‘wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger!’ Old One, do you know of such a child? Which stable is He in?“

“I think I do know! Come with me.” And I led them to the stable beside the Bethlehem Inn.

And there He was! Asleep in the manger! The most beautiful Child ever born!

We were still kneeling before Him in adoration when an almost unbelievable spectacle unfolded there in the stable. Three tall kings, stately and majestic, all robed in scarlet and purple and wearing glittering crowns, came and bowed themselves to the ground before the Child. They opened a great chest of treasures. And then, one by one, each king offered the Child gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.

I heard a sound as of many little bells ringing. And I looked to see if it could be the harness bells worn by the camels in the kings’ caravan.

But it wasn’t camel bells. It was my alarm clock.

As I got dressed, I noticed the bottom of my nightgown was torn in several places, as if I had deliberately ripped it into strips.

At the dinner table, as we enjoyed the perfectly carved turkey, I told the dream. And my oldest grandson said, “Ah, Grandmother, you dream true dreams. From now on we’ll just call you ‘Old One.’”

Published December 1988. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.