The lunch lady takes a stand

by COLEEN HOSELTON

When the baby Jesus was born, it was not in a palace with a velvet-lined cradle nor at a fancy smancy hospital with a well-paid doctor and nurse to help his mom ease him into the world.

It was in the lowliest of places that baby Jesus opened his eyes for the first time. Mixed in with the warm bodies of animals and sweet-smelling hay in a manger feeding trough were the smelly realities of a stable that did not include a clean-up guy.

I am a lunch lady. I do a lot of clean-up.

I work in a place at an public elementary school that is usually noisy. Imagine more than a hundred first and second graders cut loose from their classroom for twenty minutes. This place does not come with a hundred mothers, however.

After the classes have left, the floor is covered with milk spills and icky smooshy scraps of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Straw wrappers are stuck to the table tops and the area around the garbage can is really gross.

When people talk of the “important” jobs in the building they speak of the principal and the teachers who are more educated and earn a considerably larger salary than those in the kitchen.

No one ever talks of wanting to grow up to be the lunch lady.

But I have learned that even my lowly position can be vital, especially when it comes to believing in God and Jesus.

There are many people who have decided it is not a good idea to talk in a public education facility about the birth of Christ at Christmas time. “No! No! You can’t do that,” we are told. There are actually laws loudly reminding us not to express that belief.

After being in the position for even a few weeks, I knew the drill. I had been warned.
Because I believe in the true message of Christmas I felt like ducking whenever I said “Merry Christmas” and not the politically correct word, “holiday”.

Let’s face it, lunch ladies are in contact with a whole mess of people. In my case the customers are much smaller than in some other cafeterias, but still you must consider them people. Wishing them significant greetings of the season was incredibly tempting but was it worth the risk of losing my job?

I am not a public kind of protestor type. When everybody else was burning the flag and their lingerie back in the 70s, I was hanging out on the sidelines watching. Or taking photos.

I didn’t want to make a big deal about this or I might get silenced before I even spoke.

What could I do?

The answer actually came in a bonk-you-over-the-head kind of simple way.
Every time there is a holiday or special occasion, I decorate the cafeteria. Pumpkins come out for Halloween, turkeys for Thanksgiving and hearts for Valentines Day.

I was told that I could use a Santa Claus or a Christmas tree for Christmas but to me the true symbol for this most important of days is the stable. The crèche. The baby Jesus in his little manger with a cow staring down at him.

To attempt putting one of those out could be food service employment suicide. Face in the paper. Branded as a religious fruitcake. I didn’t just say that. Sorry.

After twisting and wiggling over this issue for a year and a half, I finally decided it was time the lunch lady took a stand.

I worked after hours to set up my display three weeks before the Christmas vacation. I brought out a beautiful piece of linen on which to set my symbols. I used big poster-sized letters to spell out the holiday and tiny gold stars on wire to add sparkle.
The next day when the six- seven- and eight-year-old students came in, you could hear them whispering and see them pointing at the display. They were excited because many of them had never seen the object of focus in the center of the cloth.

I had set up a menorah. A candelabrum or candlestick holder with nine branches used by the Jewish religion for their holiday called Hanukkah or Chanukah which was to take place over the next eight days.

In eight branches I had placed blue candles. The final branch held a white candle with gold threads in the wax. The children were very curious.

As they came past me with their trays full of mac and cheese they asked what that “thing” was on the shelf. Most importantly they wanted to know when we were going to light all those candles.

In just one brief sentence I explained this was a symbol of the Jewish religion used for their celebration at this festive time of year. I did not need to say more except to explain we could not light the candles because of safety issues.

When Hanukkah had passed I set up a tiny crèche. It was a challenge to keep from adding the shepherd with their sheep and the wisemen with their camels but I was embarking into a politically incorrect arena and did not want to attract too much attention.

It was certainly possible that I could be “called on the carpet” by angry administrators, especially if they had been contacted by unappreciative parents.
What happened was the exact opposite. Although I didn’t get a lot of questions, no one complained because I had first taken time to share the beliefs of others in a quiet way.

I had paved the way for expressing my faith without causing a lot of fuss. As an added bonus, the children actually were given a “lesson” without the use of textbooks. I had broken no law because I had not attempted to teach the children about religion, merely inform them of what was happening in the world around them.
Best of all, the students and faculty as well as visiting parents to the cafeteria were able to realize that this time of year was much more than a commercial glut that causes such frustration. Several people even quietly thanked me for my “decorations” and courageous use of expression for both the Christian and Jewish religions.

Some of the best messages have come from the lowliest places. A babe in a manger, a light of reason in a cafeteria.

COLEEN HOSELTON is a freelance writer from New York.

©2009, Valley Living