This is a Christmas ornament known in our family as "Peanut Jesus". So popular was this little guy that one year we made up a story to read before we put him on the tree (heavily influenced by the original Walton's Christmas movie), and the kids (11 cousins, all a year or two apart) would draw names to see who would read the story (which I've also attached). The original Peanut Jesus came from a grammar school craft sale many decades ago, but he has been reproduced many times since. It is just a cardboard toilet paper inner core cut in half and glued back to back, with a peanut wrapped in TP glued inside, glued to a wooden clothespin. Total cost estimated at about 75 cents. I have accepted Peanut Jesus as my personal savior of crafting. Here is the story the children tell:

Peanut Jesus and the Spam Loaf

Every Christmas time, well really just around Thanksgiving – when the nice folks from the Christian Children’s Fund would drive a tractor trailer full of non-perishable goods into town and give all the kids from the hills a milk crate full of canned food to take home – Mama would make sure she separated all the Spam and canned meat products from the cans of tomato soup and creamed corn, and she’d put them aside to make her famous Spam Loaf for Christmas.

Whoever Mama’s boyfriend was that year would go out late at night and cut down a nice tree from along the side of the Interstate, and we’d keep it outside by the woodshed until it lost most of the nasty smell from the stuff the highway patrol sprayed on them.

Mama and us kids would unpack the crate full of ornaments, mostly made from old car parts that we also found along the Interstate. But most favorite of all was Peanut Jesus.

Peanut Jesus was made by my Granny before she died. It was made from a toilet paper core – the cardboard tube you find in the middle of a roll – and it was cut down the middle, lengthways, and glued back to back to make the Manger. Then Granny had glued a little piece of toilet paper inside of that to make the Swaddling Clothes. Then she took a peanut – just an ordinary peanut, like I heard you get at a circus – and she made a little face on one end, with a pen, just two dots for eyes and a little crooked line for the mouth – and glued a little halo from a gold pipecleaner on its head. Peanut Jesus.

Sometimes Peanut Jesus would slip out of his little manger, and once the hounds got hold of him and nearly et him – but we would always find him and fit him right snug back into his little toilet paper wrapper before it was time to put the ornaments away until next year.

Then, on Christmas Eve day, while she was cooking up the Oleo and toasting the Sunbeam bread to stuff the possum for Christmas dinner, Mama would mash all the Spam and canned meat, mixing it up with chopped onion, some evaporated milk and a can of cream of mushroom soup, and she’d put it in this old copper Jello mold shaped like a giant lobster, which she found in the Salvation Army dumpster back before I was born.

Just before putting it in the oven to bake, she’d sink a nickel way down into the loaf, way down deep where we couldn’t see it, and then she’d bake it up until the bright pink meat turned a kind of browny-pink. Then, late on Christmas Eve, just before all us kids were being sent to our room out in the back of the woodshed, she’d take it out for supper, and we’d all gather round while she cut it up into tiny little squares – there were seventeen of us, after all – and she’d dish out a little square onto each of our paper plates, joined by a glob of mash potatoes from a box, and a single slice of bright purple beet from a can.

We’d all save the square of Spam Loaf for last, and the lucky kid who found the nickel got to put Peanut Jesus on the Christmas tree before they went to bed.
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