Christmas Bread

Every year in November my wife bakes about 60 loaves of cinnamon bread and gift-wraps it, and stores it in our freezer until the week before Christmas. Then we give it to everyone we know as Christmas gifts - our coworkers, family, friends, and neighbors.

The neighborhood I live in is an interesting dynamic. We live in a cul-de-sac, and all of the houses look like townhouses in their shape, but are duplexes in that they are positioned in joined pairs around the circle. A majority of the houses are occupied by people who rent, which often equates to regular turnover in the population. We’ve lived there for 6 years now, and I think there are only 2 families who have been there longer than us, out of 8 houses. And there have been some people who have lived around us who live very differently than we do.

We’ve seen fights out in the street, heard lots of yelling from inside houses, had our gas siphoned, had to call the cops more than once, endured loud music late at night, and many other things that have made life interesting. Only in recent years have I changed my perspective on how I should interact with some of my neighbors. Previously I had taken the standard avoidance technique, just staying in my house and avoiding eye contact.

But with a maturing faith, God has worked in me to help me be more open and accepting of people, especially my neighbors, no matter what their situation. There have been Sundays in the past when I spent my morning sitting on a stoop talking with a couple of guys about cars that have been more meaningful to me than some of my Sundays spent in a church service. And I have realized that avoidance is actually a terrible technique for dealing with neighbors - especially ones that you have some fear about at times.

I enjoyed getting to know some of the guys across the way this past summer and we would have whole-neighborhood cookouts in the evenings that were great. Some of those guys moved out this fall though and the houses sat empty for a while. A few months ago, one family moved in, and I hadn’t really talked with them much yet - just waved a few times. And another family moved in a few weeks ago, but I’ve hardly ever seen them outside yet.

Anyway, back to Christmas bread. We tend to fear the unknown and avoidance is a natural tendency. But my wife makes bread for every house in the neighborhood. So, I was tasked to deliver the bread last night. I at first thought about sneaking out and quietly leaving it by their doors - but abandoned those ideas as weak. I resolved myself to talk to everyone face to face. Everyone I visited last night not only greeted me with a smile, but some even had food or gifts for us. And once I had finished my rounds, I saw a woman sending her daughter out to deliver cookies around.

I made sure to take my time and have a real conversation, and if someone didn’t know my name I introduced myself and shook their hand. There was one family not home, the one I haven’t seen yet - but we left our names and address on the card with the bread. So, yet I left it, but we weren’t avoiding them. They just weren’t home. We left our names. I had a really great conversation (actually the longest conversation I had last night) with one woman who I know struggles more than some of the others.

As I walked back to my house, I could have kicked myself for feeling an hour ago that I wanted to avoid all that I had just experienced and how stupid that was, and how much I would have missed out on - especially with just keeping up good relations with the people I live close to.

I’m reading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller right now, and one of the things he talks about in that book is that we are all created to live a good story, but that there is a force out there that fights against that. Satan doesn’t want us to live a good story - he wants to steal it from us. That almost happened to me last night, but thankfully it didn’t.

Don’t let fear rob you of a better life story. Don’t avoid; engage.