The Christmas we saved Jesus

Photo by Laura Seaman on Unsplash

This Christmas Eve, we gathered with family to celebrate the holiday, and by “celebrate the holiday” I mean drink bourbon, eat Italian finger foods, tell each other how good we look, have dessert and play games. The first game was a white elephant involving the rolling of dice, the selecting of wrapped presents, the stealing of unwrapped presents and the making of a new Christmas memory for our family.

Halfway through the white elephant, after one circuit around the room, everyone opened their presents, revealing fun things like Snoopy cookie jars but also less fun things like a nose hair trimmer in the shape of a finger (my contribution - I’m sorry). Our 9-year-old son opened what turned out to be a bottle of liquor, prompting laughter and comments like “guess dad will be driving home tonight” and “no drinking that until you’re 12.” His sister, unbelievably, opened a set of whiskey glasses at the exact same time. One of my cousins said, “What are the odds?”

In this family?

Pretty good.

But that delightful moment that I am glad was not witnessed by anyone from the county was not the new Christmas memory for our family. The tale that will live on in Donatelli family lore began during Round 2 of the white elephant when the family went back around the circle and – in the true spirit of Christmas – repeatedly stole lottery tickets and booze from each other. One oft-stolen item was a white piece of paper that said “Jesus.” Fool that I am, I figured it was symbolically Jesus, welcomed into the room on Christmas Eve, you know, like Linus' speech from the Peanuts. Or something nice like that.

Nope.

“Jesus” is a fish, and my wife reeled him in.

Christmas Eve – the night Christians prepare to welcome Jesus into our hearts – became the night we welcomed Jesus the beta fish into our family.

I thought for a brief moment about protesting but did not like the optics of rejecting Jesus at Christmas. I had studied my Bible. There is only one bad guy in the Christmas pageant – the innkeeper who relegates Mary, Joseph and the soon-to-be baby Jesus to where the oxen sleep, which, looking back on it, seems dangerous.

Imagine all the Bible guys bragging about the roles they played in the Bible, and they get to the innkeeper, and he vaguely offers up something like, I was present on the night Christ was born. And everyone’s like, “Were you a shepherd? A wiseman?” No, uh, I was the innkeeper. And their response is, “You horrible man.” And he’s like, hey, my lack of hospitality makes the greatest story ever told even more memorable! And they’re like, “This isn’t Whiplash. It’s a baby.” And the innkeeper mumbles obscenities and gallops away on an oxen.

I am NOT going anywhere near that mess.

Jesus was coming home.

Much like the baby Jesus born in a barn near large bovine animals, our fish Jesus found itself in dire straits. His tank had no top, which would make for a precarious car ride home. His little environment had no tiny castles or plants with which to interact. It was like a fish jail cell. The water was littered with dozens and dozens of food pellets, leading me to wonder if the white elephant gambit wasn’t some last-ditch effort on the part of the owner to relieve himself of the guilt of killing Jesus. I have no idea how Jesus got to the party without splashing out of the tank and how he didn’t eat himself to death. Best I can figure, he is a fish of admirable self-control who exhibits a high level of executive function. He has brains. I liked Jesus immediately.

Seeing Jesus was in peril, my wife began the painstaking process of scooping out the excess tiny food pellets. She has a big heart. And a soft spot for fish. Our last beta, Jimmy Buffett, died last year, which meant in our home we mourned the deaths of two Jimmy Buffetts in 2024.

Did you know the real Jimmy Buffett was born on Christmas Day?

The universe, man.

There was, then, the matter of getting him home in a tank with no top. I had studied my MacGyver. I Saran-wrapped the top of the tank several times, which I tied tight with a belt of rolled-up wrap.

My genius is posted here, for posterity.

Whispers: MacGyver.

My wife felt it was important that we poke a small hole in the Saran so some air could get in.

“Jesus is supposed to die on Easter, not Christmas,” she said matter-of-factly.

A hole was poked.

Given the poor state of the tank, the water, the food and the heartbreak of abandonment, it wasn’t a given that our new pet was going to make it. We prepared the kids for the worst. “We don’t know if Jesus is going to live, but we’ll do everything we can to help him. We’ll be sad if he dies, but we’ll know we did everything we could.” My son offered to carry the tank to the car. He wasn’t strong enough to lift it, but what matters is that at that moment he wanted to.

On the ride home, my wife held Jesus in her lap. You don’t think about how bumpy your local roadways are until your wife is holding a 10-gallon fish tank in her lap containing an aquatic animal named after the son of God. To comfort Jesus and us all, I played the “The Little Mermaid” soundtrack.

At home, we gave Jesus a spot on our kitchen counter, and Jen plucked out the rest of the food pellets.

Then we put on our pajamas, set out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and went to bed.

In the morning – A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.

Our kids are prime Christmas age. They live to open presents. While they waited patiently at the top of the stairs to go down to the tree, which has become our tradition, my daughter declared, “First we check on Santa’s cookies, then we see if Jesus is alive, and then we do stockings and presents.”

Santa was still first … but Jesus before stockings and presents?

My heart was full.

The kids ran downstairs.

“Santa ate the cookies,” they yelled.

A stub of carrot remained on the plate, the glass of milk drained.

Past the stockings and the tree, past the nativity, under the mistletoe, they raced to the kitchen and turned on the light.

“Jesus is alive!”

If you’d like to read about another encounter we had with the divine, check out The Communion Bunny.