The Christmas Ham

 

     Several decades ago, I lived in a big pink house in the high country of central Idaho and was alone for Christmas. My daughter had flown from Boise to see her mother in Hawaii, and my fellow ranch hands all had family gatherings to organize. My nearest neighbors, Bill and Billie Jean, lived in a doublewide half-mile down a dirt lane. I didn’t know them well. He was a boat mechanic and she the daughter of a large cow-calf operator twenty miles south. 

     It was Christmas Day and I was in the kitchen fixing a peanut butter and banana breakfast sandwich when my pampered indoor cow dogs fired off, letting me know that someone was at the front door. It was Billie Jean, inviting me to come to their place at three that afternoon for a Christmas meal. It would be only them, their infant daughter, and me. I needn’t bring a thing. I said I would be more than pleased to eat with them and would bring fresh bread, which was in currently in the oven. Thanks. 

     It was a traditional ranch country spread, turkey, stuffing, ham, canned sweet potatoes with minimarshmallows on top, mashed Idaho spuds, turkey gravy, green bean casserole, jellied cranberry sauce, Miracle Whip ambrosia with Mandarin oranges, pumpkin pie, bread and butter. The meal began with the four of us, Bill at the head of the table, me to his left, little Daisy in a highchair across from me, and her Mama at the other end of the chrome dinette. 

     As mentioned above, I didn’t know these folks, and never suspected that Billie Jean had ambitions to become a fire and brimstone preacher. Before we began filling our plates, she asked us to bow our heads and launched into a lengthy and impassioned version of Grace in which she not only thanked God for our food and Jesus for giving his life to absolve us from sin, but also called on the powers of Heaven to bring pestilence and ruin on the unbelievers who were attempting to steal our freedoms. Amen.

    Looking back, I realize that I goofed twice that day. The first was to begin by overloading my plate with a huge helping of turkey breast and a glutton’s share of the ambrosia, along with samples of everything but the ham, so I was totally stuffed by the time my plate was clean enough so the dishwasher would not have to work hard. 

    That is when Billie Jean locked eyes with me and said in a rather stern manner, “Have some ham.” I told her I was too full to fit even a piece of pie in my frame and told her how appreciative I was that she and her family had reached out to me. She thumped the blue tablecloth with the butt of her knife and repeated, “Have some ham.”

    My second mistake was not reaching over to the plate of ham and yarding a chunk onto my plate. Instead, I asked “Why.” She folded her arms under her breasts. “To prove that you are not a Jewish vegetarian.” That opened the Mr. Smarty Pants valves in my head, and things went south from there.

     I began by confessing that, if eating pork was the measure, I was neither Jewish or Muslim by religion, nor a vegetarian, the latter being somewhat obvious by the volume of turkey I had recently downed, and the former by the fact that I was a lifelong Spam addict and a guy who always ordered a sausage patty with a restaurant breakfast. I should’ve left things there but couldn’t.

     I mentioned that the fellow whose birthday we were celebrating was a Jew and that there was little scriptural evidence that he ever ate ham or would if he were with us today. In his day, according to various Biblical sources, a critter with cloven hooves that didn’t chew a cud was considered unclean to both Jews and Muslims. Pigs were runty scavengers. The reason that folks rolled the fabled rock in front of Jesus’ tomb was to prevent wild boars from eating the body. I couldn’t quote chapter and verse, but she probably could. 

     That I was raised by a Mom who was a pretty devout Baptist and a railroading Dad who was seldom home on Sunday, that we ate ham year round because we raised pigs. and that the last time I had spent much time in a church was when I delivered the Easter Sunrise sermon as a hungover teenager to a Methodist youth group in Alliance, Nebraska. And, by the way, was she equating Jews with the unbelievers whom she accused of trying to steal her freedoms? 

     Bill just sat there. Billie Jean glared. Lucky for me, Daisy picked up the vibes at the table and provided me an exit cue by writhing and squalling as though attacked by a boogyman. I excused myself from the table, thanked them both for feeding me, and walked back to my big pink bunkhouse, happy to spend the rest of the day with my dogs.