EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

She saw him before he saw her. Whether he was really sleeping there in his chair or merely dozing, she didn’t know. He did sleep a lot, that she did know. In fact, he seemed to always be in dreamland whenever she came upon him nowadays.

There was a time, in her long ago memory, when that certainly wouldn’t have been the case. Back then he was always happiest in his workshop, forever tinkering with some such thing in his garage or his basement. She didn’t think he’d ever purchased a lawn mower fresh from the store – in fact he would look for people’s cast-offs on trash pick-up day and haul them home for refurbishment or to scavenge for parts. He had been a master-fixer.  A true child of the Depression, “make do or make it do” - that was pretty much his motto.

But the workshop was gone and there was no basement at the place where he lived now. Oh, that was necessary, she knew. Somewhere down deep she hoped he knew it, too, but she wasn’t sure he really did. She knew he missed the freedom of coming and going as he pleased, of having stuff to just “do.” She hoped he realized it was for his own good, that he needed this place, that his car was better off in someone else’s hands and that he really did need the other hands that helped him with his meds and saw to his daily needs.

Well, anyway, here it was Christmas-time once again and she hoped she could help him get some enjoyment from the season. It made her a little sad to think of his Christmases as a boy. He’d told her mother that the only Christmas trees he’d known as a youngster were those as were found at school. No candles or tinsel or special ornaments at his own house. For him there had been no joyful treks, stomping through the Minnesota snow, out to chop down an evergreen and certainly no laughing, jostling times with his siblings as together they strung popcorn or made paper garlands to festoon their prize. The woman suspected this might be due to his own father, her paternal grandfather, whom she’d never met. This man had passed on well before she’d come into the world, long before her parents had ever come across one another themselves. She did know, though, that the grandfather had not been a happy man, forced to work the family farm as he was, against his will, at the bidding of his own father. The grandfather was known to be a rather cold, stern man, not given to much emotion and apparently not even to such apparent “fripperies” as Christmas.  She felt for those kids, her dad and her aunts and uncles, and for those long ago Christmases that just weren’t.

As the father of his own family, she remembered fondly that he had always made sure his children knew Christmas. There was always a tree, bright with those cool bubble lights and shiny icicles, a few presents, the Sunday School program with “pieces” to be memorized at church and without fail, no matter how lean the times, a delicious holiday meal on the Day itself. The woman and her siblings had never known a Christmas that wasn’t. And, as kids, they had never known their father had.

And so, with a thankful, grateful Christmas heart the woman pushed open the door and gently called to the drowsy old man in the chair. “Hi, Dad,” she wakened him. “I’ve got your tree! Let’s give this room some Christmas cheer!” Because, you know, everyone needs a little Christmas.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GIFT

Are you hoping to find something extra-special under the Christmas tree this year? How about a $354,000 special edition McLaren 12C Spider sports car? (Admittedly, you’d have to have a really BIG tree!) Maybe a $100,000 hen house? A $250,000 dinner for 10 prepared by famous chefs? Or for the more budget conscious, a $30,000 walk-on role in “Annie: The Musical?”

Those outrageous items are all from the 2012 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, an annual catalog known for its fantastic fantasy gifts. The most expensive item this year is a $1.09 million pair of Van Cleef & Arpels watches which depict Parisian scenes. A trip to the famed “City of Light” is also included ,where the buyer gets to actually go visit the pictured places.

Back in my mother’s rural Minnesota of the late 1920’s, and early 30’s my mom and her siblings were apparently thrilled to receive an orange and a pack of gum. No brand new dollies, no shiny metal fire trucks and certainly no Neiman Marcus items. Times were tough on the farm back then, and the kids thought that a piece of out-of-season tropical fruit and tasty chicle were pretty sweet.

When my siblings and I first heard about this orange-and-pack-of-gum- thing we were dumfounded. Was my mother kidding us? Those things weren’t actual presents, were they? How could you have a Christmas like that?

It wasn’t as if there were heaping gift piles under our tree. Times were tough for my parents in the 50’s and 60’s, too. Each one of the four of us received a “big” present from our parents and the brothers and sisters drew names to purchase a smaller gift for the one whose name was drawn. And that was often pretty much it.

What I realize today as an adult in her sixth decade that I did not quite “get” in my first as a child is that Christmas is really only about one present. And it’s what Neiman Marcus doesn’t comprehend: you can have all the money in the world to spend on the most outrageous, over-the-top thing in the world and it won’t matter one itsy bitsy bit. Multi-dollar gifts won’t make Christmas happier, brighter or prettier. No matter how much money you spend on them, they won’t last. The present that makes Christmas, the one that matters, the one that lasts has already been purchased  for you.

This Gift cost the Giver everything. It came at an unexpected time to an unsuspecting people in an unpretentious place. It came in sweet, simple packaging. It came without strings, without price to those who accept it. It promises love, hope, help and acceptance. And it promises life ever after. Best. Gift. Ever. That’s Jesus.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8

 

GIVE THANKS

My daughters think I’m a little too chatty with checkers sometimes. No, not the game but the people standing behind cash registers, checking out my purchases.  Just the other day I gave the lady at Stein’s Garden Center my Thanksgiving “speech.” I couldn’t help it.

I had found a small resin statue of a Native American couple who were holding a cornucopia; on the bottom of the statue it read, “Give Thanks.” And I did. I was happy to find it. I often think we pay so much attention to the Pilgrims and the 1621 Thanksgiving feast that we forget about the folks who actually kept the English alive and enabled them to have the feast in the first place (it was the Wampanoag people). I found an accompanying, matching figurine of a Pilgrim couple and decided to purchase that, too. Even though neither statue depicted accurate native or Pilgrim dress, you can’t ask for everything (well, I guess you can but you’ll be disappointed!).

Actually, I was thrilled to find some Thanksgiving decorations at all. Long before we flip the calendar to October, Halloween arrives in the stores. They are awash in an overabundance (in my opinion) of orange and black – covered in creepy, stocked with sickening and gagging in ghoulish.  On the heels of that, Santa arrives – and often in the very next aisle. Red and green glitter and glitz compete with ghosts and goblins while we haven’t yet even stored away our swimsuits and sunscreen. If you locate a lost Pilgrim or wandering turkey in all of this, you’re fortunate.

It’s not that I am repulsed by Halloween or Christmas. We participate in both (although with a Halloween caveat: just cute cowboys and princesses and the like, please; blood and guts and gore are for the hospital emergency room, thank you very much). No one is forced to purchase any of the stores’ early season offerings. You don’t even have to look at them if you don’t want to. What bothers me is that so many of us focus so completely on the “gimme holidays” (you know, Halloween – “gimme candy” and Christmas – “gimme lots of other stuff”) and don’t take time in between to emphasize everything we’ve already been given. Thus, my Thanksgiving decorations.  If I see nice ones, I buy them and put them up; they help remind me to be grateful, appreciative and thankful – at Thanksgiving and the other 364 days of the year. I like the Alan Cohen quote:  “Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.”

The long story now told to you was the one I was telling the Stein’s checker the other day. From the odd, “I don’t care” look on her face, I suspect she agreed with my daughters’ “TMI” assessment (too much information) regarding the checker conversations. But I guess I don’t care. We are not a thankful people. I am often not a thankful person. We need frequent reminders of how much we have, what we’ve been given. We need to work hard to teach our children to be thankful (trust me, they won’t naturally turn out that way without instruction and God commands us to be thankful). Learning to be thankful will help us live better lives. So thought Daniel Defoe when he said, “All our discontents about what we want appeared to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Psalm 107:1  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.