Random Ramblings

The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth

At Christmas time men and women everywhere gather in their churches to wonder anew at the greatest miracle the world has ever known. But the story I like best to recall was not a miracle " not exactly. It happened to a pastor who was very young but his church was very old.

Once long ago it had flourished. Famous men had preached from its pulpit and prayed before its altar. Rich and poor alike had worshipped there and built it beautifully. Now the good days had passed from the section of town where it stood. But the pastor and his young wife believed in their run-down church. They felt that with paint, hammer, and faith they could get it in shape. Together they went to work. However late in December a severe storm whipped through the river valley and the worst blow fell on the little church " a huge chunk of rain-soaked plaster fell out of the inside wall just behind the altar. Sorrowfully the pastor and his wife swept away the mess but they couldn't hide the ragged hole. The pastor looked at it and had to remind himself quickly, "Thy will be done!" But his wife wept, "Christmas is only two days away!"

That afternoon the dispirited couple attended an auction held for the benefit of a youth group. The auctioneer opened a box and shook out of its folds a handsome gold and ivory lace tablecloth. It was a magnificent item, nearly 15 feet long; but it, too, dated from a long vanished era. Who, today, had any use for such a thing? There were a few half-hearted bids. Then the pastor was seized with what he thought was a great idea. He bid it in for $6.50. He carried the cloth back to the church and tacked it up on the wall behind the altar. It completely hid the hole! And the extraordinary beauty of its shimmering handwork cast a fine, holiday glow over the chancel. It was a great triumph. Happily he went back to preparing his Christmas sermon.

Just before noon on the day of Christmas Eve as the pastor was opening the church, he noticed a woman standing in the cold at the bus stop. "The bus won't be here for 40 minutes!" he called and invited her into the church to get warm. She told him that she had come from the city that morning to be interviewed for a job as governess to the children of one of the wealthy families in town but she had been turned down. A war refugee, her English was imperfect.

The woman sat down in a pew and chafed her hands and rested. After a while she dropped her head and prayed. She looked up as the pastor began to adjust the great gold and ivory cloth across the hole. She rose suddenly and walked up the steps of the chancel. She looked at the tablecloth. The pastor smiled and started to tell her about the storm damage but she didn't seem to listen. She took up a fold of the cloth and rubbed it between her fingers. "It is mine!" she said. "It is my banquet cloth!" She lifted up a corner and showed the surprised pastor that there were initials monogrammed on it. "My husband had the cloth made especially for me in Brussels! There could not be another like it."

For the next few minutes the woman and the pastor talked excitedly together. She explained that she was Viennese and that she and her husband had opposed the Nazis and decided to leave the country. They were advised to go separately. Her husband put her on a train for Switzerland. They planned that he would join her as soon as he could arrange to ship their household goods across the border. She never saw him again. Later she heard that he had died in a concentration camp. "I have always felt that it was my fault " to leave without him," she said. "Perhaps these years of wandering have been my punishment!" The pastor tried to comfort her and urged her to take the cloth with her. She refused. Then she went away.

As the church began to fill on Christmas Eve, it was clear that the cloth was going to be a great success. It had been skilfully designed to look its best by candlelight. After the service, the pastor stood at the doorway. Many people told him that the church looked beautiful. One gentle-faced middle-aged man " he was the local clock-and-watch repairman " looked rather puzzled. "It is strange," he said in his soft accent. "Many years ago my wife " God rest her " and I owned such a cloth. In our home in Vienna, my wife put it on the table" " and here he smiled " "only when the bishop came to dinner."

The pastor suddenly became very excited. He told the jeweller about the woman who had been in church earlier that day. The startled jeweller clutched the pastor's arm. "Can it be? Where does she live?" Together the two got in touch with the family who had interviewed her. Then in the pastor's car they started for the city. And as Christmas Day was born, this man and his wife who had been separated through so many saddened Yule tides were reunited.

To all who hear this story, the joyful purpose of the storm that had knocked a hole in the wall of the church was now quite clear. Of course, people said it was a miracle; but I think you will agree it was the season for it!

Variations:

The Internet-circulated version of this tale adds many additional details not present in the original: the setting is Brooklyn, the tablecloth features an embroidered cross at its centre, the woman identifies the tablecloth by her crocheted initials in one of its corners, the woman mentions that she had made the tablecloth 35 years earlier (which places the story in the mid-1970s), and the account is attributed to a "Pastor Rob Reid."

A January 2011 version circulated by e-mail which begins "The brand new Rabbi and his wife were newly assigned to their first congregation to reopen a Shul in suburban Brooklyn" changes the religion of everyone involved.

Origins: True or not, this is one fabulous story, containing many of the elements that make this glurge so compelling: A lonely couple, separated by that greatest of evils (i.e., the Nazis), each unaware of the other's fate, is brought together again on the holiest of holidays by a man of the cloth. The key to their reunion is an ordinary object that no one else valued, and the chain of events unfolds due to an amazingly serendipitous series of circumstances. If only a storm hadn't knocked a hole in the church wall, if only someone else had bought the tablecloth, if only the woman had not happened to be standing outside the church at just the right moment, if only her long lost husband hadn't coincidentally been a member of that particular church, the couple might never have found each other again. Of course, to those of us who believe in miracles, all of this was no mere coincidence; it was purposefully directed through the actions of a loving God.

What do we know of this tale? It's called "The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth"; it was written by the Rev. Howard C. Schade, pastor of the First Reformed Church in Nyack, New York; it was published in the December 1954 issue of Reader's Digest; and it was anthologized in Alice Gray's Christmas Stories for the Heart in 1998. Since the story is undated, there is no way of telling how long the separated couple reunited by the tablecloth had been apart. The few details contained in the tale seem to indicate that the couple separated sometime after the German annexation of Austria (also known as the Anschluss) in 1938, which means that since their story had been written by 1954, they could not have been split up for more than sixteen years. Certainly sixteen years is a tragically long time to be separated from one's spouse, but if this story had taken place in the 1970s (as presented in the Internet-circulated version), the couple would have been apart for nearly forty years!