The Poinsettia Solution

 

So, here we are in January, and I am writing about poinsettias. But why? Aren't we past Christmas? Well, yes and no.

To most, I think, the term Christmastide is simply a synonym for the Christmas season. But in some Christian traditions, it has a more specific meaning. Have you heard the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas and wondered, what and when those days of Christmas are? It is referring to the twelve days that follow Christmas Day, also known as Twelvetide or Christmastide. The culmination of those days is the church's festival of Epiphany, which memorializes the arrival of the Wise Men at Bethlehem with their gifts for Jesus. I raise this because the night on which I am writing these words is January 5, the twelfth night after Christmas, and it brings to mind a crisis that occurred in our family on an Epiphany Sunday a couple of decades ago, and that was only solved by an epiphany of our own we now call, "the "poinsettia solution."

It all began sometime in the early 1990s when my wife came across an article about a family that gave secret gifts over Christmastide. When she told me and our teenage son about it, we got excited about adopting the idea ourselves. And, for several years, we did. The second or third year, we selected a single father and his two daughters. For twelve nights, we left anonymous gifts at their doorstep—not expensive ones but such things as a scented candle, a miniature manger scene, home baked cookies, and, one Saturday night, a poinsettia.

Here is how it worked. Just after dark, my wife, and son, and I would drive to the house of the family, and my son would go to the front door, quickly place the wrapped gift on the stoop, and ring the doorbell. Then, he would race to the car, and off we would go before anyone could spot us. So that we would remain anonymous—which was essential to the fun—we varied the delivery times and, after a few days, we parked farther away so our car would not be seen and recognized. In our minds, remaining undetected was almost as important as blessing the family.

As I look back, it seems remarkable we were not caught, but we never were. However, that does not mean we were never suspected. And this particular Christmastide, we were. At church the next day, in a room next to one I happened to be in, I overheard the father talking about the mysterious gifts and the poinsettia they had found the night before. "Who do you suppose is behind it?" he was asked. I was shocked when he replied he strongly suspected us!

I have no idea why he thought it was us—there were plenty of other likely suspects—but what a panic that threw us into! What if the father came right out and asked if we were the ones? Being found out like that would be tantamount to a barefoot Hobbit being detected on a some secret errand. What family pride would be lost if we were identified! Moreover, exposure would be sure to bring the public embarrassment that is intrinsic to such revelations: some might call us Christmas philanthropists; others, though, might label us as attention getters. Horrors! But that wasn't the worst thing. Worst of all, we could never do it again. The game would be up. People would know immediately who the secret givers were. Seldom had our family faced such a crisis.

We decided we needed a strategy for shifting the father's suspicion in a new direction. That is when we came up with our epiphany: the poinsettia solution! Later that afternoon, we paid the family a visit, as we sometimes did. We rang the front doorbell, but this time we did not run away. And when they came to the door, we presented them with another poinsettia! "We thought you would enjoy a little Christmas gift," we said to them. As we handed them the plant, they glanced at each other with a dumbfounded look. We could literally see their theory evaporate on their faces. From that moment on, they suspected anybody—except us—of being the mysterious givers.