SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR [F, 12-5-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Rememberer—SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR [F, 12-5-25]

 

Christmas is a time when we travel long distances to stay in a hotel in the town where we are visiting family. Now. Not when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, when my family visited relatives, or they visited us, there were never enough beds, so we kids slept on the floor. Sometimes the grown-ups did, too, according to how many folks had crowded into the modest homes most of us lived in. Often the hosts gave up their bed to the visiting grown-ups [not the kids!] and slept on the floor with us.

We didn’t think of it as a hardship, even Aunt Ginny [Virginia], who was no spring chicken even when she married the older bachelor farmer, George Redinbo, and less so when she gave birth to Bobby and then Ronnie.

Sleeping on the floor was an adventure, and worth it to be part of a big extended family that would not have been able to get together if we’d had to pay somebody to put us up…and put up with us.

When morning came, we gathered up the sheets and blankets and pillows and put them aside for the next night, and we helped fix breakfast, and we started planning the day together.

Even now, in this modern time, when people have larger houses but less room for guests, and we have more money and more hotels, when we were still able to travel, Helen and I sometimes spent the night with friends, and vice versa. We are blessed with good friends. They are good hosts.

It’s still a special time, even though none of us sleep on the floor. [In part, because once down, we would not be able to get up again.]

The problem with Christians today is that so few of us are willing to sleep on the floor. When you sleep on the floor in order to be together with others in the family or friendship community, you are sharing the hosting, and Christians are called to be hosts, not just guests, in the world.

Hosting is a shared responsibility. We don’t say, “Oh, you poor worldly misfits, we’ll give you a place to sleep.” We say, “We’ll share the floor with you.” That is what good hosts do.

And, if you can’t get with the floor-sleeping metaphor, whatever you think hosting is, the bottom line is that Christians are called to be hosts in the world. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.” [Luke 22:27.]

John Robert McFarland