There is little comparison to the evolution of Christmas and all its wonder.

Growing up, how fun it was to drive to Sioux City as a big family to pick out a Christmas tree every year. (Dad may have had other thoughts about that obnoxiously loud trip.)

I can’t say we ever got the hang of hanging tinsel on the tree without it looking like a Christmas larcenist looked out the window and saw us coming up the lane. Nonetheless, when it was time to hang the coveted “Silent Night” ornament, it was a ceremonious moment indeed.

When my sister got that ornament for Christmas after we all grew up, it made her cry.

Aside from the tree, we made all the messes kids are supposed to make during the holiday season — cut-out cookie dough that (I’m sure) remained in the crack of the table until it went to kitchen table heaven; tinsel that Mom picked up from the floor for weeks before and after Christmas; sap water from trees that may have been knocked over a time or two, and projects that left as much glue on them as they did in Mom’s clean-up rags.

Then we grew up and had families of our own — and had all those same messes to clean up (except for the tinsel — I wasn’t as gutsy as Mom). And some of my favorite ornaments were the hand-made ones our kids made in school and at church. Now, they adorn their own trees.

When our kids were nearly grown, we invited a 16-year-old young lady from Germany to be part of our family for a year. Her first winter with us was the first of its kind for her. I will never forget the look on her face when she first saw snow blowing horizontally across our farm yard. She showed us pictures of her winter-time home in Germany — beautiful tufts of snow on the fence posts from snow that had obviously fallen softly … and came straight down.

In Iowa, the snowfall resembled, “Godzilla meets my brothers playing King of the Hill.”

She prepared a box to send from the United States to her family in Germany. Among other things, we packed a beautiful collage of senior pictures I’d taken of her (which made her mother cry); and I remember that she purchased several 1/16-sized tractors for her youngest brother, and strung them on a long ribbon for him to extract from the package.

When we visited her family, that brother couldn’t believe the size of the real thing.

That Christmas when she was with us, one of my fondest memories was recognizing on her face the need to talk to her family on the day before Christmas. When it got to be noon our time, she said, “It’s already Christmas Eve there,” and she told me of the special German Christmas foods they would be (or were) eating.

Her grandfather was a baker, so she knew what she was missing out on.

Though she would never have asked it, I told her she should call, and so she picked up the phone and dialed the number that would ring into her family’s home in Germany. She wanted me to be on the other phone so I could talk to her family, too. And what I heard on the other end — while I couldn’t understand even a word they said — was nothing but pure joy.

Her grandmother came to the phone and said (this girl’s) name over and over — jubilant that she would get to talk to her granddaughter, now halfway across the world with a family she herself didn’t know, on the most wonderful, family-centered night of the whole year.

They missed her presence, but a simple phone line connected their hearts that night.

Happiness sounds the same all around the world, no matter what language.

That girl has been a wonderful, important part of our family for the last 20 years.

From messy tinsel to a special “Silent Night” ornament, to awkward, handmade ornaments, to foreign voices demonstrating that love is far stronger than distance — Christmas certainly has evolved over the years.

And now we are cleaning up after grandchildren at Christmas.

I think my back is evolving, too.

Rats.

Well … Christmas rats.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, IA. She can be reached at kjschwaller@evertek.net. Note new address.