Christmas Eve. Southeastern Kansas. The middle of nowhere.

Kansas is one of those places that gets a bad rap. People speak of Kansas like it’s Death Valley, or the hindparts of Mars.

People say stuff like, “Yeah, I drove through Kansas once, I was bored spitless for six hours.”

But that’s only because they aren’t seeing the Sunflower State the right way. The Thirty-Fourth State can bewitch you if you open yourself to its quiet beauty.

First you have the sunsets. Kansan sunsets are neon red and gold, vivid enough to put Claude Monet to shame. The sundowns are an ecological phenomenon, caused by red dust in the atmosphere which has traveled all the way from the Sahara to suspend itself above Bourbon and Neosho County.

Also, you have sublime flatness. Millions of Americans visit the Gulf of Mexico each year to stare at prairie-flat blueness. Kansans have a gulf of their own.

Currently, the state has 15.8 million acres of virgin prairie. You can stand at certain places in this state and, literally, be hundreds of miles from the nearest Super Target.

In the wintertime, however, Kansas has earth-stopping blizzards. This is the geographical center of the nation. They get all the weather you didn’t want.

Tornadoes. Fatal summers. Snowstorms harsh enough to make Scandinavia look like a weekend in Honolulu.

It was during one such snowstorm, on Christmas Eve, that Marie was at home. She was a young mother, with two children. They lived in a 40-foot single wide, perched on 200 acres of family land.

The blizzard of aught-nine was apocryphal. Many evangelicals believed this was the literal end of the world and were sincerely repenting of their evil ways, committing themselves to prayer, fasting, and self flagellation. Meanwhile, the German Catholics decided to take up vodka as hobby.

To say the storm was “bad” is like saying invasive dental surgery is “kinda fun.” In some places there were four-foot snow drifts. Parked F-150s were obscured by white dunes. Front doors were blocked.

Marie’s husband was a construction worker. He arrived home after work, mid-blizzard, driving a big delivery truck. He opened the rear gate. Fourteen Mexican men leapt out.

These were men who had no cars. Usually, each morning, these coworkers hitched rides with fellow employees, to and from work.

But tonight they were stranded. So Marie’s husband brought them home to Neosho County.

“Are you crazy?” Marie said to her husband. “It’s Christmas, we don’t have room for these people.”

Marie’s two young daughters were, however, thrilled with their new visitors. They had 14 brand new friends for Christmas. The living room was standing room only. Only one man among them spoke English.

Marie pulled her husband aside. “What are we going to feed everyone?” she said.

“I don’t know,” her husband said. “But there was no way I could leave them alone on Christmas.”

As it happened, the Mexican men had brought some food of their own. It was food they brought for lunch each day. They had coolers filled with chicken and beef, tamales, and fresh vegetables their wives had sent with them.

They even had microwave ovens and hot plates they often used to cook on jobsites.

The men overtook Marie’s kitchen, and got to work preparing a veritable fiesta. They used ingredients and items found in Marie’s pantry, combined with their own fresh spices and veggies.

“We ate chicken mole,” said Marie. “I’d never eaten mole before, it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. They made something called pozole, and we ate tamales that were so good I almost cried.”

When night fell, the men all gathered in the warm den, around the tree, to hang out, drink wine, and sing songs.

In many regions of Mexico, people give gifts on Christmas Eve. So the men exchanged gifts with one another and with Marie’s family.

They gave whatever they had on them. One man gave Marie a pocketknife. Another gave her a gold necklace with a crucifix. A teenage boy gave her a wood carving of a dove.

Soon, everyone was exchanging gifts in the dark living room. Marie gave several gifts, too.

“I was giving them whatever I could find in the closet,” said Marie.

One man received a scented Yankee candle. Another man got a porcelain rooster that Marie’s grandmother had gifted her a few birthdays ago. One man received a bottle of strawberry wine. Another man got a One Year Bible she’d received from her church group for Christmas. The man wept when he saw it.

“No puedo leer Inglés,” he said, touching the book. Tears in his eyes.

“That’s okay,” said Marie’s 9-year-old daughter. “I’ll read it to you out loud.”

So her daughter read the Bible to all the men, while another man translated. They read the Christmas story.

“When I saw my husband come home with all those people,” said Marie, “I thought it would be the worst day in the world. I was so disappointed. But it turned out to be probably the best Christmas we ever had.”

So anyway, now you know why Marie’s family eats tamales every Christmas Eve.