We spent Christmas on the road this year, but the trip seemed almost anticlimactic. We’d already experienced an amazing season.

First, there was Tom’s office party. Everyone was coming to our house, so Tom ordered a turduchen—a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken—from a catalog to serve as the entrée. It was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, but didn’t make its appearance until Friday, thus presenting us with our first challenge. It was frozen rock solid, and the instructions said it needed forty-eight hours to defrost, an impossibility since the party was less than twenty-four hours away.

Tom went into fast defrost mood, placing the pricey entrée under running water and then in water baths. Saturday morning he created a fresh water bath in a cooler and placed the immersed turduchen outside. Then we left for church. When we came home there was a white lump sitting in the middle of the driveway, and Tom swerved as he drove up to the garage.

There he saw that the cooler had been overturned, the plastic wrapping torn from the birds, and, yes, our dog Ella had dragged the turduchen across the lawn and through the mud, and begun her own Christmas feast. Of course, as we drove in she sat like a princess on the porch watching quietly as Tom discovered her morning’s work.

It was 12:30; the guests were scheduled to arrive at 5 p.m. The challenge was twofold: what to serve and how to get it done in time. Tom brought the carcass into the kitchen and cut away the gnawed-upon turkey. He washed off the first layer of stuffing and found the duchen portion still frozen, undamaged by Evil Ella. So he took off for the grocery story in search of a fresh turkey breast to wrap around the duchen.

Meanwhile, I took Ella to a neighbor’s home—to protect her life—and put the ducken into the microwave to defrost. After searching several stores, Tom finally resorted to buying a whole fresh turkey that he deboned and carved down to the breast. We then tied the fresh breast around the defrosted duchen and popped it into the oven. He made sweet potato eggplant gravy, and the dinner came together as planned.

Tom’s business partner, Robie, almost fell on the floor laughing when we told him the turduchen story upon his arrival at 3 p.m. We waited until after the meal and presents to tell the staff. The best line of the night came from one of the men. "If I had know the entrée was roadkill, I would have eaten more!" he exclaimed.

The next day was the last day of our church’s annual "Drive-Through Nativity." Our son, Mark, was a shepherd assigned to stand on the main street in front of the church, in costume with a live sheep, and encourage passersby to drive up the hill to the multiscene nativity, which had other costumed players and live animals.

The sheep, being a social animal, did not like being away from his friends, who were in the scene depicting the hills outside Bethlehem. When he felt the rope slacken, he bolted across the muddy empty lot. Mark, in a long shepherd’s robe, took out after him.

Mark had just told his friends that sheep can’t run, they just saunter. This sheep proved him wrong as he jumped over moguls and darted up the hill. Visitors to the Nativity laughed in their cars as they watched this shepherd in real action. For Mark, it put new meaning into all those songs and Bible verses about watching sheep.

Our Christmas on the road began on the road near home. It ended in Denver, Colorado, with relatives—complete with stories and laughter—the best of all Christmas presents.

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