As much as I believed in Santa Claus, I believed even more in my granny.

If Mugi said something was true, it was true.

Grandmothers don’t tell little children “stories.”

When I was going up, a story was something that you told that wasn’t true.

“You’d better not be telling me a story,” Mama would say when I was, in fact, not telling her the truth or anywhere close to it.

So, what Mugi told me about the night that the Baby Jesus was born was not a story. It was the truth, the real truth about the night the Christ Child was born.

Mugi said that on Christmas Eve night so long, long ago, the Baby Jesus was born in a cold, cold barn in a place called Bethlehem.

She said that people all over the world had been waiting for the Baby Jesus to be born but they didn’t have radios or telephones or anything like that so God sent an angel to let everybody know that the Baby Jesus had been born.

What Mugi said was that there were shepherds out in the field and they were the first ones to see the Angel of the Lord and to know.

All of a sudden there was this bright light and then the angel just came out of nowhere and told the shepherds that the Baby Jesus had been born and they hurried off to see him.

I already knew all about that because we had learned it in Sunday school. But what our Sunday school teacher didn’t tell us was the best part of the truth about the night the Baby Jesus was born.

Mugi said that people all over the world had been waiting for the Baby Jesus to be born. But it was not just people that were waiting. The animals were waiting, too. All the animals all over the world.

Now, Mugi said, that when the animals heard the Baby Jesus’ birth cry, they all welcomed Him into the world with their special sound. The cows mooed. The horses whinnied. Donkeys brayed. Wolves howled. Lions roared. Mice squeaked and the elephant trumpeted his welcome.

I could image what that must have been like, all the animals welcoming the Baby Jesus with their special sounds.

But Mugi said it wasn’t a noisy racket that the animals made. That all of their special sounds blended together to make the most beautiful music and you could hear it all over the world.

Then, she said, that all of the animals got down on their knees to worship the Baby Jesus. All over the world, the animals knelt together. Mugi said the most wonderful sight was the baby lamb kneeling right next to a big, ol’ lion. She said that was because the Baby Jesus brought love and peace to the world.

Now, all of that happened at midnight on Christmas Eve. And, Mugi said that from that night on, every year at midnight on Christmas Eve, all of the animals all over the world kneel to worship Jesus Christ the Savior of the World.

In my child’s mind, that was the most wonderful thought of Christmas – all of the animals kneeling to worship a little baby called Jesus.

What I wanted most was to see the animals kneel on Christmas Eve but Mama said little girls couldn’t be running around in the cow pasture at midnight on Christmas Eve. And, it was mighty dark back there, too. So, on Christmas Eve, I would close my eyes and imagine how it must be, the animals kneeling on the cold, cold ground in the quiet of the dark night worshiping the Baby Jesus.

And, I knew it was that way because my granny told me so and grannies don’t tell stories.