12/05/2025
My name isn’t important.
But the people I want to talk about today are.
This Christmas, while most of us are setting tables, warming our homes, and buying last-minute gifts… there’s a group of people whose holiday looks very different:
The farmers.
The men and women who still rise before the sun,
who work whether the air burns their lungs or freezes their fingers,
who pray over soil the way some folks pray over their children.
I grew up around them.
My grandparents were farmers — the kind who measured days not by hours but by seasons.
The kind who stayed up late fixing machines that should’ve died years before they did.
The kind who packed lunches for the field, not the office.
They didn’t take sick days.
They didn’t get snow days.
And they sure didn’t get Christmas “off.”
Because cows don’t stop needing feed.
Fences don’t stop needing mending.
Fields don’t stop needing attention just because the calendar says December 25th.
One Christmas morning when I was ten, snow covered everything — untouched, peaceful, beautiful.
But when I woke up, Grandpa wasn’t in the living room with the rest of us.
He was out in the barn, shoulders dusted with frost, warming a newborn calf that had arrived in the middle of the night.
He looked at me and smiled.
“Life doesn’t wait till after Christmas, kiddo,” he said.
“But that’s okay. It’s a gift to care for something.”
I never forgot that.
And now, as an adult, I understand something even deeper:
America’s farmers carry our holidays on their backs.
The bread on our tables.
The milk in our fridge.
The vegetables in our casseroles.
The pies cooling by the window.
They weren’t dropped off by magic.
They were planted, watered, protected — year after year — by people who rarely ask for thanks.
So this Christmas, I want to say it plainly:
Merry Christmas to the farmers.
To the ones who stay up late to save a crop.
To the ones who miss dinners because the work won’t wait.
To the ones who battle drought, storms, low prices, and long days — and keep going anyway.
To the families who hold them up, even when money is tight and the future feels uncertain.
You make holidays possible.
You make tables full.
You make communities strong.
And in a world that moves too fast,
you remind us that the most important things still grow slowly.
💛 THE LESSON
This Christmas, take a moment to thank the people who feed the world — not just with food, but with courage, perseverance, and love for the land.
If you know a farmer, call them.
If you see one, shake their hand.
If you pass a field, whisper a little gratitude into the winter air.
Because the soil remembers.
And so should we.
Merry Christmas, farmers.
Thank you for giving everything — season after season — so the rest of us can celebrate in warmth.
