A president impeached. Bombs falling on Iraq. Amid the tumult, the season’s joys are still to be found.

It hit Betty Held the other day: Her grandkids will be reading about this in the history books.

They’ll be up late reviewing it some Sunday night years hence, cramming for an exam about the weekend Bill Clinton was impeached as cruise missiles slammed into Baghdad.

This really is historic, she thought.

It really is important.

No wonder she found herself tuning in to the House impeachment debate despite herself, listening with half an ear even as she scribbled out her Christmas cards.

A mother of four and a grandmother of seven, Held believes holiday preparations should be her No. 1 priority this time of year. And she has tried to put Christmas first. She really has. She flipped through catalog after catalog to find just the right pajamas for her 12-year-old granddaughter. She trekked out to the John Deere store, although she hates Christmas crowds, to buy a mini-tractor for her grandbaby. She even snooped through her other grandkids’ rooms to check out which toys they already have, so she won’t disappoint them with a duplicate.

“I know my grandchildren are expecting those Christmas presents,” she says, Santa Claus earrings bobbing emphatically. “So I won’t let [the news] get in the way.”

But it has.

The impeachment, the bombing--the whole infuriating, exasperating saga--kept tugging at Betty Held and her husband, Jim, who own the Stone Hill Winery in this tucked-away town on the Missouri River, 80 miles and a dozen cow pastures west of St. Louis.

This is the busiest time of year for the Helds. They sell a lot of wine and holiday gift baskets, and tourists cram their vaulted cellars to taste their much-honored dry red Norton, their fruity Seyval and their crisp Missouri Champagne. On top of the extra business, it’s Betty’s job to balance the books for a year-end audit.

Still, even with all that tumult, the Helds are finding themselves transfixed by the news from the nation’s capital.

“It’s got my attention,” says Jim, 65, a dead ringer for Papa Claus with his ruddy face, white beard and green flannel shirt pinned down with red suspenders over a Santa-size belly.

The bombing campaign against Iraq worried both Helds, who feared American casualties. As Jim put it, “Somebody’s kids are over there, and that’s not a good mood to be in during the holiday season.” But it’s the impeachment that really has ensnared them, almost against their will.

Jim was two hours late to work Friday morning because he’d been watching the House debate on CNN. He didn’t learn anything new, he says, just heard the same stale rhetoric. In any case, his own mind was made up: He decided long ago that Clinton should be impeached. Still, he wanted to see history in the making.

Although they’re both following the news more closely than they would like--more closely, probably, than they’ve followed any recent event except Mark McGwire’s home run chase last summer--Jim and Betty Held don’t discuss it much at home. They both agree that Clinton’s lies should disqualify him from office. They both suspect that he ordered the attack on Iraq in a desperate bid to postpone his impeachment.

Mainly, they both wish the whole mess would just be over and done with.

So does their daughter, Patty Held-Uthlaut, who handles publicity and special events for the winery.

Patty, 39, hasn’t been able to watch as much of the impeachment debate as her parents. Her two young kids keep her hopping at home; she also chews up time worrying about finances since her husband, a hog farmer, is losing big money this year.

The little she has heard, however, has made Patty uncomfortable, because her 7-year-old daughter, Natalie, has heard it too.

Natalie has long been in the habit of watching CNN Headline News with her mom over breakfast. She loves the fashion reports from Europe (“She’s 7 going on 16,” her grandma says) and she pays close attention to the weather so she’ll know what to wear to school. Lately, though, the Clinton scandal has been crowding out her favorite features, and Natalie has started to ask her mom questions about this Bill Clinton fellow.

“She knows he’s the president of the United States and she knows he did something wrong with this Monica Lewinsky,” Patty says.

Not willing to talk oral sex with her 7-year-old, Patty says she tries to answer the questions “in a roundabout way,” telling Natalie: “The president did something that wasn’t morally correct and the government is trying to decide if he should remain our president.”

Patty thinks he shouldn’t; she wishes Clinton would resign. As long as he’s in the White House, she asks, “What kind of example are we setting for our kids?” Natalie’s respect for the office of the presidency already has tumbled. She grasps that the president has screwed up, badly.

And that gives Patty an idea.

Since Natalie is so interested in the topic, her mom plans to give her a civics assignment over Christmas break: to write a letter to Clinton, telling him what one 7-year-old girl in Hermann, Mo., thinks of his conduct.

“I think,” Held-Uthlaut says, “it would be most enlightening.”