“Every good and perfect gift comes from God the Father,” they repeated.
Moments later, an adult volunteer tapped Erika on the shoulder.
“Thank you for listening so well, for so long. You have earned one of our quiet prizes,” she said and handed the little girl a gift wrapped in red and green tissue paper.
“Thank you,” Erika responded and hugged the gift without another word.
I watched her face grow a big smile. Other children tore the paper off their prizes to see what treasure they had earned, but not Erika. Instead, she looked down at the child still asleep in my lap, pressed her lips close to my ear, and whispered words that took my breath away.
“Now I have something to give my brother for Christmas,” she said. Without examining the contents, or knowing if there would be something else for her, Erika gave her gift away.
Tears welled in my eyes when I recognized that my own prayer for a divine interruption had just been answered. Erika’s Christ-like generosity, and unselfish love for her brother, showed me the true spirit of Christmas. At five years old, Erika understood that love is the perfect gift, and that the best gift of all is the chance to give love away.
~Sandra Wood
A Basket of Hope
Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.
~George Iles
I had hidden the car a few blocks away and with finger-over-lips silently motioned and directed our three kids out of the station wagon and toward a softly-lit small weathered house set back from the highway. I felt like a cat burglar, with family-in-training, skulking along the bushes that warned wayward drivers they were far too close to the now snow-filled ditch.
We took a shortcut through the church lot. I could feel a soft smile forming playfully as we passed the church building, imagining our burly pastor’s reaction if he could see us “applying” his message on how little ones would someday follow in our footsteps. Somehow I don’t think this little snow scene was exactly what Pastor had in mind. I paused to belatedly reassure myself that we hadn’t forgotten anything. Yep—the girls and I each had our assigned bags, and our little guy alternately carried and dragged a brightly painted red empty bushel basket.
Another car whizzed by and our little towheaded son was amazingly solemn when I gently pressed my flattened hand on top of his stocking-hatted head—once again repeating my silent message to scrunch down out of sight from the headlight glare passing over the yard. The girls immediately followed suit, quietly ducking until the white light rode over us, the yard, and then finally slid over the bank by the road.
It was their idea after all. Laurie had memorized Luke 2: 8-14 for the Christmas play and its story of the babe with no place to lay his head had profoundly affected her and her siblings as she shared it multiple times in preparation for the big event. Cheri, the thoughtful one, was always reaching out to others, so our eyes met in understanding when she’d climbed into the car without her mittens a few Sundays before, then shrugged her shoulders in response to her daddy’s inquiry, pointing to the new visitors—a red-mittened shy little girl plowing across the snow-covered field with her mom to the same weather-beaten house that now stood before us. I think she had the idea then, but I love to read a different Christmas story each night of the entire month of December and the reading of The Gift of the Magi where both husband and wife gave their precious possessions to purchase a gift for the other had cemented it. All three insisted they could give up one or more of their gifts for someone who probably would not get a gift otherwise, and thus the plan was born. What parent could refuse such a selfless act that also ended up sharing a family tradition—new pajamas and hot cocoa for Christmas Eve?
Add gloves for everyone, a doll for the little girl and a truck for her brother, the makings of a simple Christmas meal and here we were, whispering and darting from one bush to the other. Quietly the children completed the plan—circling the trees that flanked the sloping porch, Kevin first placed the basket. I added the plastic bags of food and raced with him behind the big scraggly bush at the edge of the yard while the girls quietly topped the basket with the wrapped gifts. Cheri retraced her steps to me, and Laurie, as planned, knocked hard twice and raced back to join us collectively holding our breath as the door opened. It was the dad—he stood on crutches, looking around to the left—to the right—then called his wife. She stepped out and also scanned the yard, then bent to pick up the basket. Two little faces appeared stair-stepped in the lighted doorway and excited squeals sounded as eager hands helped to lift and carry the packages in as the door closed off their wondering chatter.
That was our signal and we ran like the wind, our mitten-clasped hands joining reverently this time for a dash across the field to the waiting, and by now, cold car. None of the usual clamoring for front seat, or murmuring about the car’s chill occurred as we each privately recalled the faces outlined in the doorway’s glow, and I knew the children’s hearts were as warmed as mine had been.
It was a special Christmas and the beginning of a fun tradition to find a family and leave a surprise on their doorstep, but this one became especially meaningful a few months later when the family announced at church that the father’s leg had healed, he’d gotten a new job, and they were moving.
As Cheri and I were about to exit behind our family, the mom stepped up behind me and slipped a plastic bag into my hand, which I could feel contained a frame. Don’t open it until you get home,” she admonished, “and,” she paused and whispered, “Merry Christmas.” I looked up in shocked dismay, wondering if she’d discovered our secret, but she shyly smiled and touching Cheri’s hair explained, “I’ve been working on this since your little one gave Edna the red mittens last December, so now it seems kind of Christmasy. Hope you don’t mind, but those mittens were the start of our Christmas hope.”
Touched, I tearfully assured her we’d surely love whatever it was, and after Cheri and I gave last farewell hugs, we rushed to the rest of the waiting family in the car. For once dinner could wait, and the moment we were in the door everyone hovered around the package as I drew out a simple cross-stitched picture of Mary holding a contented baby Jesus, their hearts close. It seemed to remind us that there was the place of Hope—close to the heart of Jesus. We lost touch with that family, but the picture still speaks the Christmas message in our home year-round and I knew Cheri still treasured the memory years later when she told me what she’d named her first little girl—Kristin Hope.
~Delores Christian Liesner
Celebrating Christmas Away from Home
Christmas is a time when you get homesick—even when you’re home.
~Carol Nelson
I stood misty-eyed on our apartment balcony, my back to my husband, trying not to cry while I stared at our sunny December view of the Mediterranean Sea. How I wished I were back in California. Gordon came and stood beside me, his hand on my shoulder. I turned to face him, then choked out the words. “It just doesn’t feel like Christmas. Not here in Beirut, so far away from home.”
I snuggled into his shoulder and let my tears flow. “I thought being so close to Israel would make Christmas brighter, more real. Bethlehem actually seems farther away than it did when we lived in the U.S.”
We joined hands as we walked into our living room and sank onto the couch. I wasn’t through talking yet. “Because we live in an Arab Christian neighborhood, I expected to enjoy our usual Christmas experience,” I grumbled. “I was so wrong.”
My voice rose as I began to list all the missing seasonal signs. “Families don’t decorate the outside of their houses for Christmas. No Christmas tree lights shine from our neighbors’ apartment windows. No Christmas carols are playing in the background as we shop. No Christmas cantatas are advertized. No manger scenes. Plus we’ll miss the family Christmas party. Buying a live Christmas tree with that pleasant, fragrant smell is out of the question here because trees are too precious to cut down. It will be impossible to decorate that skinny, artificial tre
e we bought to resemble last year’s gorgeous fir.”
I slumped lower on the couch. “It’s going to be a bleak Christmas without the trimmings.”
Gordon nodded as he softly rubbed my hand in his. “We’re obviously going to have to generate our own Christmas mood. Since our kids are so young, they have no preconceived ideas about how to celebrate Christmas. We’ve got to create traditions for them to remember. Christmas customs that work for all of us no matter where we live.”
He watched me closely. “What part of our traditional Christmas celebration seems most important to you?”
I looked down at the floor and allowed memories of past Christmases to flood my mind. I raised my eyes and lifted up a finger for each point. “Being with family and friends. Singing Christmas carols. Sharing a Christmas Day meal with pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert. Playing the White Elephant game with adults on Christmas Eve.”
He nodded his head. “Think about it. We can initiate traditions that include sharing food and playing our favorite gift exchange game right here in Beirut.” He walked over to the desk and returned to the couch with a tablet and pen.
“We don’t have family here,” he continued, “but we do have new friends. How many people will our living room hold?”
“Probably twenty-four.”
The list-making began. Eventually, twenty-two friends received invitations to a Christmas Eve buffet. Instructions for the evening included wearing something red and bringing a wrapped white elephant present for a gift exchange game. The British and Australian couples laughed when we described that a white elephant gift meant giving away something you already owned, with no “to or from” stickers required. “It wouldn’t be proper to bring a used item as a gift where we come from,” they explained. Getting into the spirit, they brought “old” gifts.
Christmas music played in the background as our guests arrived on Christmas Eve.
We played a couple of “get-to-know-you” games and feasted from the buffet. After we ate I started the white elephant gift exchange game. After I initiated a two-minute-only swapping rule, the room turned into a grabbing, lurching, uproar as our guests rushed around after every gift was opened, trying to swap what they held for their preferred item.
The evening ended with us plopped down on couches, chairs, and the carpet, singing Christmas carols and listening to the Apostle Luke’s Christmas story. Verse seven resounded with the essence of Christmas: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger” (KJV). We felt the bond of love that Jesus gives to those who follow him.
It was close to midnight before our last guests left, prized (or maybe not) gifts in tow, many loudly vowing to plan a better strategy for next year’s game. I pulled off my heels and flopped down on the couch. Gordon soon joined me, a big grin lighting up his face.
“You have to admit this room’s been saturated with Christmas cheer,” he commented.
“That’s true,” I replied with a smile.
We sat silently, reveling in the moment. “You know what?” Gordon said. “With this new Christmas party tradition established, I don’t think we’ll ever need to worry about how to celebrate Christmas again.”
I slowly nodded my head. He was so right. We’d done it! We’d learned how to celebrate Christmas away from home.
~Pat Stockett Johnston
My First Noel
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
~Thornton Wilder
We all know the story—how Jesus was born in a stable after Joseph and Mary journeyed to Bethlehem and couldn’t find an inn with a vacant room. And we’ve also seen it depicted on Christmas cards and in Nativity scenes—Mary in her flowing gown, the well-kept stable, the Christ Child wrapped in spotless white or baby blue swaddling clothes. But what was the first Christmas really like? I’ve often wondered about that, and now I think I know.
It was almost Christmas 2004, and a few of us had made the long trip from Kampala, Uganda, to a remote mountainous region in the north. We were taking medicine, school materials, and the Gospel to a primitive agrarian and goat-herder people known as the Ik.
It was the furthest from modern civilization that I had ever been. The people’s dress couldn’t have been simpler—colorful beads and unfinished swaths of fabric that they draped over their shoulders or wrapped around themselves. Their homes were mud huts. We pitched our tents inside the stick-fence borders of their villages.
Each day we trekked along goat trails to another village, where people gathered to meet and listen to us. I’d brought a whiteboard and colored markers, and told them stories from the Bible as I illustrated the main events and characters.
In the third village we visited, a mother had recently given birth. I knocked on the door of the “medical center,” which was no more than four mud walls.
As I stepped inside, I was met by the smell of stale air mingled with smoke. There, on the hay-strewn floor, beside a few hot coals, sat a thin woman nursing a tiny baby boy wrapped in a towel. The mother looked up at me, her eyes filled with anxiety. “My breasts are dry,” she said, in her own language, gesturing to the small bundle that suckled hopelessly.
A little light streamed in through a small opening in the wall that served as the only window. As I looked around the room, trying to imagine what it would be like to give birth under such circumstances, village sounds drifted in—bleats from the goats, little children’s laughter as they played, and faint, scratchy music from someone’s radio that was hooked to a hand-cranked generator, the Iks’ only source of electricity.
I stepped outside and called Katrina, a Czechoslovakian linguist who had come along to make a documentary about the Ik. I explained the situation, and we quickly agreed to give the mother what was left of our milk.
As Katrina went for the milk, I asked the mother if I could hold the baby. She smiled and handed him to me. His towel fell open and I could see that he was still unwashed, and the umbilical cord still hung from his navel.
A breeze swept through the tiny window. The mother shivered and pulled her wrap tightly around her shoulders. The temperature had dropped unexpectedly in the last week.
Then a thought from my childhood came back—If I could have seen the newborn Jesus, what would I have given Him? The similarity of this situation seemed to cry out to me. No, I told myself, the parallel is absurd. This is no Christ Child, and this isn’t Bethlehem two thousand years ago!
But the truth rang even louder. Did it matter that this baby was no one special? Did it matter that his mother was a lowly tribes-woman who few in this world knew or cared about? Every detail of this new birth mattered to God, who at that moment was peering down from Heaven, proud and pleased with His new creation. And this was, in truth, probably a more accurate picture of the world into which Jesus was born than the idealized one depicted in most Christmas cards, Nativity scenes, and paintings.
What would I have given Him? The thought came again, followed by Jesus’ own words from the Gospels, “If you have two shirts, give to him who has none.”
I had two shirts. In fact, I had two on and plenty more at home. I didn’t need both of these. Meanwhile, in my arms, I held a representation of that wonderful birth celebrated by billions. Suddenly, I felt an unexplainable joy. Here was my chance to give the Lord something real at Christmas!
Taking off one shirt, I gently wrapped the baby boy in it. How handsome he looked now, and how proud his mother seemed, the smile on her face reflecting the gratitude in her heart.
The music from the radio outside came through stronger now—Christmas music! “Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Let Earth receive her King!”
He had truly come. This wasn’t a mere stage reenactment with actors in costume. This was real—as real and as close as I had ever come to knowing what the first Christmas might have been like.
The song on the radio finished and another began. “Th
e first Noel the angel did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay; in fields where they lay tending their sheep, on a cold winter’s night that was so deep....”
There, far away from civilization and the usual glitter of Christmas, with humble goat herders in the remote mountains of Uganda, I experienced my own First Noel.
~Nyx Martinez
A Place for Christmas
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
~Roy L. Smith
“Joy to the World,” blared on the stereo, filtering through the closed door of the guest room. I sat on my borrowed bed, wiping a tear that slipped down my cheek. What was there to be joyful about?
My mom came into the room where I stayed. “We’re getting ready to play Yahtzee. You coming?” She saw that I was upset and sat down next to me. “What’s the matter, honey? Aren’t you having a good Christmas?”
There wasn’t a lot to celebrate that year. We’d just moved away from my hometown. My mother and stepfather were out of work and we didn’t even have our own house yet. We were staying with our friends, the Allens, for the holiday season while looking for jobs and a house in a nearby town. It was the first Christmas I wouldn’t be able to celebrate with my dad, stepmom, and little sisters—not to mention grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
“I just miss everyone back home, that’s all. I’ll be out in a while.” It wasn’t the whole story, but Mom hadn’t had an easy time either. I didn’t want to bother her with all the rest. She patted me on the shoulder and told me she’d see me later.
I thought of all the Christmases in the past when we crammed into Grandma’s house in rural Wyoming. My cousins and I gleefully slept in a “tent” under the big dining room table while all of the adults slept in the beds. During mealtimes, we’d crowd around the table and devour homemade holiday favorites like turkey with all the trimmings. There was raucous laughter and singing around the piano. We all pitched in, washing and drying dishes.