"Don't Throw Out the Baby with the Bath!"

When I was a baby, I lived with my Mom and Dad in a tiny little trailer house on the home place, a few steps away from the main farmhouse where my paternal grandparents lived with their two youngest daughters. The trailer, which was considerably smaller than many modern-day RVs, had a kitchen, living room, and bedroom, but only one sink, in the kitchen, and a toilet in a little nook all by itself. When any of us needed to bathe, we had to use the clawfoot tub in the farmhouse bathroom.

One-year-old me, in our cramped trailer house.

Around the time I turned two, Mom and Dad rented a farm a few miles away from the home place, just a mile outside of town. I am sure they were excited to move to their own place, with a real house, but they were not so excited to discover that the new house didn't have any indoor plumbing. They set out to remedy that situation as quickly as possible, but it takes some time to bury a septic tank and install plumbing in a house that has never had it before. So, I was toilet trained in the outhouse and with a small, indoor, potty chair that was just my size.

There was no convenient, adjacent house with bathroom facilities, so we made do with a round, galvanized tub that hung on a nail on the porch when we weren't using it. Saturdays were usually bath days for all of us, although Dad sometimes took an extra bath during the week if he was particularly filthy from farming.

When we needed baths, Dad would set the round tub in the middle of the linoleum floor in the kitchen, and he or Uncle Gary, who lived with us that summer for the express purpose of hauling water for his pregnant big sister, would pump several buckets full of water and carry them into the house. Mom would heat the water on the cookstove until it boiled, then pour it into the tub, cooling it to the right temperature with buckets of cold well water. After all of that, Mom and I could have our baths. Dad was the last to bathe in the same water, so when he was finished, he would carry the tub outside to empty it, and hang it back up on its hook on the porch. Then we would all be ready to drive into town to do the weekly shopping, maybe see a movie, and socialize with the other people who were in town on Saturday night, doing the same thing. And, of course, we would still be clean when we donned our Sunday best for church the next morning.

I think we took Gary, who turned fourteen that summer, to town with us every Saturday, and left him at home with his folks for the night so he could spend a little time at home, bathe there in a real bathtub, and attend church the next morning before someone brought him back out to the farm again.

By the end of that summer, the plumbing job was complete, and we had a proper bathroom inside, installed just off the kitchen in the former pantry, with a toilet and a metal shower stall. I remember sitting in the shower on a cold, metal stool, so Mom could bathe me in the shower, but she and I still preferred tub baths, so the wash tub had to be pulled out sometimes, even then. After we had water in the house, though, Mom could fill the tub herself, with pitchers full of hot water from the new kitchen faucet.

For centuries, before indoor plumbing was common, families like mine had bathed in wash tubs in their kitchens. Traditionally, the man of the house was the first to bathe, followed by his wife, and then the kids in descending order, by age. This meant that the baby was always the last to be bathed in the same dirty water the rest of the family had used. Ewwww! The water was often so dirty that it obscured the bottom of the tub. That's where that saying came from, "Don't throw out the baby with the bath!" It was a joke, for sure, but pretty sad commentary, just the same, to think that the used bath water was so dirty that a forgotten baby might be thrown out of the tub along with the filthy bath water.

Now, in twenty-first century USA, it is rare to hear of a family who subsists without indoor plumbing. Even the poorest among us have bathtubs or showers in our homes. No one has to bathe in the same water as their whole family, and there is certainly no danger that a baby might be dumped out with the dirty bath water.

But, as this Christmas is fast approaching, I think we are dangerously close to "throwing the Baby out with the bath." In all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, we see plenty of lights and decorations, with Santa Claus in every Mall and presents piled high around our Christmas trees. We attend Christmas parties and programs and concerts. We gather with friends and family, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles to spend time with our loved ones. Christmas music is everywhere, but few of the songs mention Baby Jesus, whose birthday is the reason we have a Christmas holiday.

Oh, I know that we don't know the true date of Jesus' birth. I know that some long-ago Christians decided to celebrate Jesus' birthday at the same time as an ancient pagan holiday, in hopes that the Christian celebration would somehow supercede the inherently evil pagan revelries. I know that many of our Christmas customs are not rooted in Christianity at all, and that many are borrowed from a wealth of traditions throughout the world.

It is amazing to think that, for centuries, Christians everywhere have chosen to celebrate Jesus' nativity on December 25. I suppose it is inevitable, though, that Christmas celebrations should be sliding back toward the godless merrymaking that preceded our intentional, Christ-centered, December festivities. After all, there are so many people, in our country alone, who know little about Jesus, but choose to celebrate the secular aspects of Christmas anyway because it provides an excellent excuse to have the best party of the year.

Perhaps it is time for all of us to be more intentional again. Don't throw out this Baby with the bath! In the midst of all of your Christmas activities this week, take time to reflect on the Christ Child, Jesus, whose birth we celebrate.

"And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
Luke 2: 12