Letters from Appalachia: Christmas and the blessing of strangers

Hello from Appalachia where Christmas time’s a-comin’. And as I type this long overdue letter, Christmas is a-comin’ in hot.

The tree is up (barely). Lights outside? Nope. Christmas shopping? Look for me at Walgreens on Christmas Eve. I blame the fact that this year for some uncharitable reason, Thanksgiving and Christmas arethisclosetogether.

Twenty-seven days between Thanksgiving and Christmas should be enough prep time. After all, Black Friday now starts in July, and you can buy your lights and inflatable yard art in stores before Halloween. Somehow, my parents pulled it off in the 1970’s when Christmas, at least around here, didn’t really become a thing you needed to get ready for until mid-December. This may be hard for adults born after the mid-90’s to comprehend, but it’s true and I’m sure there’s archival photographic evidence on the internet. Put it this way: Christmas music on local radio used to start on Christmas Eve and last through Christmas morning. That was it. None of this all-Christmas-all-the-time-starting-before-Thanksgiving business. Just ponder that in your heart for a few minutes.

Despite their lack of contingencies, my parents annually exposed themselves to a reckless level of risk by taking my twin brother Joe and me to see Santa Clause every year just a couple of days before Christmas. I’m sure we regularly made late additions to our Christmas wish list and asked Santa (or Saint-ee as he was known in our home) for things that could not be found and purchased on December 23rd. But parents back then were more comfortable with their children being disappointed. It was good for us, they reckoned. Like Flintstone vitamins, Tang, and a frozen TV dinner.

Every year, Sainty took his perch in front of a big piece of red velour stretched across a wall in the back of the Hills department store in Bristol, right beside the lay-away counter. This was a brilliant marketing move because it forced parents to walk their children through the store’s toy section, and it forcibly reminded already stressed out adults that they easily could have avoided the anxiety and the threat of potential eviction in the month of January by planning ahead and paying for Christmas through monthly installments. Merry Christmas, HoHoHo, and do better next year.

One year when my brother and I were maybe 5 or 6, our parents took us to see Sainty and get our picture made while sitting on the big man’s lap. I vividly recall being dressed for success (beige corduroy bell bottom britches) and poised to plead for mercy as I presented my list and asked for clemency after a year packed with peccadillos.

No sooner had they motioned for me and my brother to advance for the big moment than I heard Momma ask, “Where’s Joe?”

It was the early 70’s. Back then, parents didn’t panic like they do today. Sure - he was first grader, but cable news was still decades away and, to my parents’ knowledge, child-knapping only happened to the Lindberg’s or other families with the funds to pay the ransom. We didn’t have money for ransom or probably enough for the box marked “Smith” on the shelf behind the back wall among the other layaways, so I’m sure they decided that a missing child was nothing to get upset about.

Eventually, my Dad headed to the front of the store where they sold slush-puppies (Cola flavor was the best), popcorn, and roasted pistachios. There, he spotted my brother as he made his move for the parking lot, a terrified fugitive who’d decided he liked his odds better in a packed parking lot at night than on Sainty’s lap next to the lay-away counter. While I’d been focused on final run-throughs for my elevator speech confessional, my brother noticed that Sainty was shockingly skinny, visibly grumpy, and possibly drunk. So he made a run for it.

Daddy sat with Joe in the car while I hopped onto the throne of grace and presented requests for forgiveness along with updated gift lists for both me and my brother. Someone had to do it. Christmas was just a few days away.

I’m willing to bet that, despite his appearance, Sainty was probably a great guy. I bet he’d had a hard year. I bet he, like me, really just needed someone to cut him some slack and let him know that everything would be okay this Christmas.

So here we are, just a blink away from ole’ Sainty - the real one - hopping on his ride and soaring over the hills and through the hollers of Southern Appalachia, a welcomed visitor even though we typically don’t take kindly to visits from out-of-the-country folk, especially in the middle of the night.

Sister Bernie Kenny probably could have attested to that.

Maybe you’ve never heard of Sister Bernie, but just up the road in Southwest Virginia and especially in Dickenson County, almost everyone knows her name. Many knew her personally. Many owed her their lives.

Bernadette Kenny was just 18 when God told her to be a nurse and heal the sick. Some struggle to find their destiny. Not Bernie. The devout Catholic knew her path, and she followed it. She moved from Boston to Ireland, made her holy vows, and joined the Medical Missionaries of Mary who to this day call themselves “religious sisters sent forth to heal the world and relieve suffering in areas of greatest need.”

For Bernie, that was Eastern Africa where she lived for years taking care of the sick and the poor. In 1978 - about the same time of our pilgrimage to see Sainty in Bristol - a Catholic Bishop told her to go to another place far from home with lots of need. Dickenson County in far Southwest Virginia. Different location, same mission: to “care for the sick by sharing Christ’s healing love.”

In 1978, the needs of tribal communities of Eastern Africa and Southwest Virginia weren’t all that different. Poverty was punishing. Quality healthcare was miles away. If you survived early childhood, chances were high you’d die of something awful before you got to be all that old. Toothaches and raging diabetes and heart attacks were unexplained but expected. So was cancer discovered after it was too late to do anything about it. And there wasn’t anything to do about it. At least not at that time in Southwest Virginia where, like Eastern Africa, hope and healing were miles away.

Now don’t be getting a mental picture of a black-robed head-covered nun whispering in the cloisters or spinning around on hilltops singing about how they’re alive with the sound of music. Sister Bernie put herself in the middle of everyday people, and she wore everyday clothes intent on blending in. Think school teacher rather than abbess. Think Maria after becoming Frau von Trapp but without the fickle husband and all those moody children.

At first, Sister Bernie lived as close as she could to the coal camps where miners slept after working punishing jobs deep underground. Soon, Bernie got her some wheels - a beat-up Volkswagen Bug. She stuffed it with medical supplies and hit the winding dirt roads in search of anyone anywhere who needed medical help. Gas for the Bug. Prayers to fuel everything else. Prayer that she would know how to help the sick, many who needed help that far surpassed her training. Prayers that the medicines and supplies would be sufficient to meet the need. Prayers that people would accept her.

Sister Bernie didn’t ask for compensation. She didn’t demand a religious conversion. She didn’t even ask to be thanked. All she asked was that people would trust her with their suffering and that, somehow, their suffering would be relieved.

Determination rooted in devotion became the wind at her back. One time, the transmission got so messed up the old VW would only drive in reverse. So what did Bernie do? “I had to go in reverse for miles,” she told an interviewer, laughing at the memory of those perilous and magical early days.

Sister Bernie - at home in Southwest Virginia. This is the photo used in her obituary after her death on December 7, 2024.

Imagine what it must have been like that first Christmas here in Appalachia for the nun sent to care for people who’d never met anyone from Boston let alone a single Catholic lady who’d most recently lived in Africa. Imagine what it was like for the people she met with deeply profound health needs and an even more deeply ingrained distrust of outsiders. Then there was the sheer challenge of communication. “Everybody had an accent,” Sister Bernie later said with the distinct hint of New England in her voice. ”We didn’t always hear what people were saying, and people told us they didn’t know what we were saying.”

Eventually, her main obstacle became something bigger than differing accents or limited supplies or even tricky transmissions. “I was frustrated because of legislation and regulations,” she once said reflecting on the inherent limits of a nurse needing the skills and authority that surpassed her training. “So, I went to school to train as a nurse practitioner, and that’s when I thought about a mobile unit.”

In 1982, Sister Bernie founded The Health Wagon - a health clinic on wheels delivering kindness and care to people of rural Southwest Virginia. Sometimes, she parked outside stores. Other times, she set up in a family’s backyard.

Sister Bernie died this past December 7th, one day shy of her 86th birthday. According to her obituary, “her heart and her life remained firmly embedded in Appalachia until she died.” Bernie, you see, never left! Here, she found more than a calling; she found a home.

“I believe that people call forth in us what is needed at the time,” she once said. “It’s not us going out who are able to give something. It’s the connection with one another. We together make something happen. That’s what it’s about. And it’s healing. Everyone in the world needs healing. And the healing is in love.”

In her final days, Bernie spoke of a broadening faith that remained true to her vows but fearlessly embraced something bigger than what she understood as an 18-year-old novitiate. “When I first became a nun, it was ‘Read the Office’,” she said in a 2022 interview referring to the sacred Liturgy of the Hours - a Catholic’s guide to daily prayer. “Now, it’s Creation. It’s what’s happening right now…here as we sit together. That’s the real Jesus. That’s The Life. ‘I have come that you may have life. Life in its fullness.’ That’s what God told us.”

A tribute to Sister Bernie I found online with a quote that seems to sum up her approach to life. Creator unknown.

Christmas is a time to welcome strangers. Sometimes it’s a filthy, down-on-his-luck shepherd who’d recently been told to stop living in fear. Sometimes it’s three dudes with less-than-practical baby presents who speak languages you don’t understand and smell of camels - the animals, not the cigarettes. Sometimes it’s the gaunt department store worker who drew the short straw and had to wear the red suit only to find out that even that wasn’t enough to make people look at him like he’s okay.

How lucky were we that, by God’s good grace, the stranger among us for so many years here in the hills of Appalachia was a nun in a Bug on a mission. Like so many of the superstars of this festive season, she came from afar bearing a gift, and her gift was special. Her gift was love - the kind that, if it has to, will drive in reverse to find you. The kind that’s free of charge and available to all. The kind of love that heals.

Merry Christmas!