Standing at the edge of his doorway and behind my taller brother Danny, I could not help taking tip-toe looks into the shabby cabin. This man represented mystery and evil in my young life yet here I was with our youth group – singing carols outside the door of “old man Shaky.”<\/p>\n
I grew up in terror of this man who walked around the city in his dark overcoat and knit skull cap. I don’t think his name was Shaky, but he did have a tremor in one of his arms. The older kids told stories about him, scary stories that always ended “if you don’t watch out, old man Shaky will get you.” I was afraid of him.<\/p>\n
Creatures like Shaky came out of their lair at night to frighten little kids and worse. The best defense being offense, I know some of the teens threw rocks at him whenever he came near. I guess some of them had followed him home.<\/p>\n
Its funny I had never thought of Shaky having a home. The one-room shack we were looking into was sided with black insulation board. Insulation board comes in eight-foot sheets, one-half inch thick. It is made of fibers; rigid but fragile. Shaky’s siding was full of holes. Yes, full of holes. Holes like a rock would make. I was close enough to read the wadded newspapers used to pack the holes.<\/p>\n
As we walked up, feet crunching in the snow, I had heard the whispers: “This is old man Shaky’s place.” I couldn’t believe it. What were we doing here? I did not feel safe in numbers so I fell toward the back.<\/p>\n
Smoke was rising from the chimney. Someone knocked on the door. No answer. Still we began to sing, “Joy to the World.” During the song the door cracked open and a bare-headed face looked at us. I don’t know if I sang with the rest on “Away in a Manger” and “Angels, We Have Heard on High.” Fear and curiosity were fighting inside me as I watched light stream from that door and frame the old man’s face. Beyond him I could just see a bit of wall with rough shelving and part of the wood stove pipe.<\/p>\n
Song finished, Shaky retreated for a moment so I pushed forward for a good look. I remember thinking his home was about the size of our shed at home. Before I could move he swung wide his door; an old man in a blue flannel shirt offering us some fruitcake. Served from a plate held in his good arm I accepted a broken piece – I think everyone did.<\/p>\n
I did sing with the group on our next song, “Silent Night, Holy Night.” Something of Christ’s incarnation crystallized in my youthful understanding – Jesus’ humility, His love, His ability to change a life – too many things to describe here. I was changed. My world had changed. I would not fear the old man again for I had seen him in a different light. The Light of Christmas.<\/p>\n
We left singing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Standing at the edge of his doorway and behind my taller brother Danny, I could not help taking tip-toe looks into the shabby cabin. This man represented mystery and evil in my young life yet here I was with our youth group – singing carols outside the door of “old man Shaky.” I grew up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,5,3,8,6,4,7],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carols","tag-change","tag-christmas","tag-holy","tag-humanity","tag-incarnation","tag-sacred"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjvanderhoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}