"Christmas, however old, is forever new," President Thomas S. Monson said during the annual First Presidency Christmas Devotional Dec. 1. "The Christmas season can be truly memorable if we but let it."

Photo by Keith Johnson

Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs during First Presidency Christmas Devotional Dec. 1.

Photo by Keith Johnson

President Thomas S. Monson

Recalling a memorable Christmas of boyhood, President Monson, first counselor in the First Presidency, described a visit with his mother to a Salt Lake City department store, which advertised that it would give away a beautiful Shetland pony.

"I was absolutely certain that I would win the pony," he said. "In fact, I prepared some straw and provided some hay in my sister's playhouse."

But, he said, the pony went to another.

"I was heartbroken," President Monson related. "As we left the store, I noticed a man bundled up against the frigid air of winter. He held in his hand a bell, the sound of which directed attention to a small kettle suspended in the air by a triangle frame. We paused and mother placed, I believe, a silver dollar in the kettle. She then turned to me and said, 'Tommy, do you have any money you would like to give? The money is given to the poor for Christmas.'

"These were Depression times. I reached in my pocket and produced two nickels, which represented all that I had, and dropped them into the kettle — first one and then the other. I still remember how warm and happy I felt after doing so. That day I didn't win the pony, but I received a far greater gift, even 'the smile of God's approval.' "

Detailing how "the Christmas season can be truly memorable if we but let it," President Monson quoted suggestions offered by renowned author Henry Van Dyke:

" 'Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to see that your fellow men are just as real as you are, and to try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and to look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness? Are you willing to do these things, even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas!

" 'Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and to ask yourself whether you love them enough?

" 'Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world — stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death — and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem those long years ago is the image and brightness of love?

" 'Then you can keep Christmas! And if you keep it for a day, why not always? But you can never keep it alone.' "

President Monson told how one young boy, Rob, kept Christmas, as related by the award-winning author Pearl Buck. Overhearing his father comment to his mother that he hated getting Rob out of bed at 4 a.m. to help milk the cows, Rob felt the awakening knowledge that his father loved him.

On the night before Christmas, Rob decided he could give his father a special gift: He would get up earlier than four o'clock, do all the milking and clean up. After arising at quarter to three, Rob set to work. "He kept thinking about his father's surprise. The task went more easily than he had ever known it to before. Milking for once was not a chore. It was something else, a gift to the father who loved him."

Later, when his surprised father went to thank him, Rob said, "It's for Christmas, Dad."

Because of Rob's gift his father was able, after all these years, to see his children get their first glimpse of the Christmas tree; on other Christmas mornings, he was still finishing his chores in the barn.

President Monson said that Rob and his father never forgot that Christmas. Rob, 50 years later, after his father had died, still remembered "that blessed Christmas dawn when, alone with the cows in the barn, he had made his first gift of true love."

Quoting a poet, President Monson concluded: "Let us keep Christmas, And keep it so well, That our hearts are a home, Where the Savior may dwell."