The Christ of Christmas

 
Hello, friends.
 
Have you had a merry Christmas? Spent it with family? Clawed into a hoard of ratical gifts? Supped on a squeak-a-licious Christmas dinner? (Not featuring rat meat as the main course, I hope.)
 
My Christmas – spent with my human and rodent families alike – has indeed been rat-tastic. The people reveled in their presents, including a slot-car race track for Dad (he’s really a pup at heart), beautiful pearl earrings for Mom, and lots of chocolate for the twins. My mouse wife, Bobette, and I too enjoyed our own special gifts: luxury nestlet material for her and a whisker groomer for me. We also delighted as the octuplets, Harry, Larry, Barry, Jerry, Mary, Kerry, Sherry, and Terry scratched through wrapping paper to find matching husky bran coats. (After all, as I mentioned in last week's blog, when rats marry mice we have baby rice, and our pups are brown rice; they look like their mother.) And the whole lot of us enjoyed the cheese platter left by Santa Paws. Plus, humans and rodents alike got a very special treat as the weatherman granted us Georgians an incredibly rare White Christmas here in Ratlanta.
 
But while the giving of gifts is grand and the time spent with family is fun, there’s a much more special reason we celebrate Christmas, and that, as I’m sure you already know, is the most special reason of all: to honor the birth of Jesus. This is special for rodents too, as Jesus is kind to man and beast alike. (Not to say that we’re beasts; pshaw. Now cats on the other paw – that’s a different story.)
 
Christmas is special to us because we got to be there when He was born. You didn’t think it was just donkeys and cattle in that stable, did you? No, we rodents were there too. Just think: if there had indeed been room for His parents in that inn in Bethlehem, we’d have never got to see Him! (Inn keepers generally discourage the presence of rats around their places of business … something about giving the customers a bad impression. Go figure!) But since He instead was born in that lowly manger, we got the benefit of being part of the first Christmas.
 
His parents didn’t have much to give Him – the swaddling clothes they wrapped Him in were the same materials my ancestors used as nestlet fodder – but they were full of love, and with all the body heat we generated, us animals made sure He stayed warm.
 
Even more special was when the wise men came to worship Him. We didn’t get much use out of the gifts of frankincense and myrrh they left, but Joseph used some of the gold to buy a bit of cheese! Goat’s-milk cheese, but it was still squeak-a-licious. And when the shepherds came with their sheep it was great for us rodents, because they also brought roughage to supplement the sheep’s grass diet, and we, er, helped ourselves to some of it. (Yum.)
 
But the best part of all was being there to witness the birth of the most rat-tastic person who would ever scamper over the earth – the One who would change so many lives, including mine. Yes indeed, that was the most squeak-tacious thing of all.
 
I hope you and yours have had a very merry Christmas indeed. In the midst of the hustle and bustle, though, take some time to remember the Christ of Christmas, and recognize that our God is a very pawsome God.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob