Remembering how the animals spoke inspires the Christmas spirit

Beverly Beckham

The Boston Globe

Back when I was child, I watched a Christmas show I have never forgotten. It aired on Dec. 21, 1951 (Thank you, Google), which means I was two months shy of 4 when I sat between my mother and father and learned that all over the world for a few hours every Christmas Eve, animals are given the gift of speech.

They speak the way people speak. They use words. They tell stories. And they joke.

The show, “I Remember Mama,” was a popular series, which I watched every Friday night on a black-and-white TV, on a small screen that routinely arced, which made seeing the picture a challenge. But the sound was always perfect, and that Friday night in 1951 on this special Christmas episode, “The Night the Animals Talked,” I heard those animals. Cows, horses, goats, sheep — their moos and neighs and baahs all at once words!

Was there a dog, too? In my memory, there was a dog, like my dog, Pal, talking and laughing and then finally singing in harmony — with all the other animals — “Silent Night.”

It was a trick of TV, I know. And maybe even a trick of my imagination. But my parents told me it was a Christmas miracle.

And I believed them.

I believed a lot of crazy things when I was a kid. I believed I had a fairy godmother who would Bippity Boppity Boo me into a fancy dress should I ever need to go to a ball. I believed in the magic of four-leaf clovers and spent countless summer afternoons combing through fields of grass in search of one. I believed in the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, one time chasing a rainbow into woods that were forbidden to me. I fell into mud and lost my shoes. The next time I chased a rainbow, I wore lace-up boots.

I believed in Neverland, too, maybe Neverland most of all, because I slept every night of my childhood — even in winter — with my bedroom window open, certain that someday Peter Pan would come for me.

I’m not saying that the Christmas cows and the sheep and the oversized donkey that live in my basement, packed away with the Christmas manger that was my mother’s, called out to me. I know that animals do not speak.

But they did beckon.

I had said out loud to anyone who would listen that I intended to play minimalist this Christmas. I was going to unpack a few Santas and decorate a small tree and call it a day. And not go crazy lugging up a dozen boxes from the cellar, to relocate everything for just a few weeks.

This was my stated plan.

But then I peeked into a box labeled “reindeer” and though none of them shouted “Get me out of here!” “I belong in the front cabinet.” “I live by the fireplace!,” each had a story to tell. My cousin Darlene made the ceramic reindeer and how can he spend Christmas in a box? For the last 20 years he’s sat in the front hall cabinet, illuminated so that every time I see him I think of Darlene, the cousin I named, the cousin I wished was my baby sister.

My father made the small wooden reindeer in his shed a year before he died. And my grandson’s girlfriend gave us a bigger wooden reindeer just last year. And there’s the tiny reindeer I bought with my mother at the old Bargain Center in Quincy Square when I was as young as my grandson is now.

So up the stairs I went with that box.

The same thing happened with the cows. My friend Anne Jackson gives me a cow every year. There must be a reason she started this but neither of us remembers.

Then came the snowmen (skating snowmen, angel snowmen, overstuffed, down-filled snowmen), each a gift, each a treasure.

Then finally the Santa Clauses. “You bought me in Iceland.” “I’m from Marshalls, day after Christmas. Half price.” “Anne King gave me to you the Christmas you were waiting to be a grandmother.” “I was a present you bought for your father, but you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t give me away.” None of these Christmas creatures said these things, of course, not the cows, not the snowmen, not the Santa Clauses.

But I heard them.

Maybe this is the miracle of Christmas, not only that the heart remembers but that it speaks. And that we listen. And while we do, it’s not the craziness and busyness of the season that we feel. It’s a kind of peace mixed with joy and love and gratitude. For what was. And for who was. And who is. And for all the Christmases past and this next one that’s yet to come.Beverly Beckham’s column appears every two weeks. She can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.