Let Us Keep Christmas
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Christmas Devotional address delivered at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Sunday, Dec. 1, 2002.
A song of yesteryear reminds me that December is here, Christmas is coming, family and friends are remembered and a figurative journey to Bethlehem awaits:
Ill be home for Christmas;
You can plan on me.
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents round the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams.
Ill be home for Christmas,
If only in my dreams.
I recall a memorable Christmas of boyhood when my mother took me to the Toyland of each Salt Lake City department store. One store had advertised that it would give away a beautiful Shetland pony. Each boy or girl was invited to write a note telling why the pony would be a welcomed Christmas gift. The signed note was then placed in a large box next to the area where the pony was stabled — right there in Toyland. The lucky winner would be announced at an appointed day and hour.
I was certain that I would win the pony. In fact, I prepared some straw and provided some hay in my sisters playhouse. That pony would have a home! At the time of the announcement, Mother and I were on hand. Alas! my name was not read. Another had won the prize. I was heartbroken.
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 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 didnt win the pony, but I received a far greater gift, even the smile of Gods approval.
Christmas, however old, is forever new. The Christmas season can be truly memorable if we but let it.
How can we do this? The renowned author Henry Van Dyke offers some suggestions. Wrote he: 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 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.
A touching Christmas story, related by the award-winning author Pearl Buck, tells how one young boy kept Christmas.
It began when Rob awakened suddenly and completely. It was four o'clock, the hour at which his father had always called him to get up and help with the milking. Fifty years ago, and his father had been dead for thirty years, and yet he awakened at four o'clock in the morning. He had trained himself to turn over and go to sleep, but this morning, because it was Christmas, he did not try to sleep.
He slipped back in time to when he was a young boy and still on his father's farm. One year a few days before Christmas he overheard his father talking to his mother.
"Mary, I hate to call Rob in the mornings. He's growing so fast, and he needs his sleep. I wish I could manage alone."
"Well, you can't, Adam." His mother's voice was brisk. "Besides, he isn't a child anymore. It's time he took his turn."
"Yes," his father said slowly, "but I sure do hate to wake him."
When he heard these words, something in him awakened: his father loved him! He had never thought of it before, taking for granted the tie of their blood. Neither his father nor his mother talked about loving their children. But now he knew his father loved him.
And then on the night before Christmas, that year when he was a young boy, he lay for a few minutes thinking about the next day. He wished he had a better present for his father than the inexpensive store-bought tie.
He looked out of his attic window. The stars were bright, much brighter than he ever remembered seeing them, and one was so bright he wondered if it were really the star of Bethlehem.
Dad, he had once asked when he was a little boy, what is a stable?
Its something like a barn, his father had replied, like ours.
Then the thought struck him: He could get up early, earlier than four o'clock, and he could creep into the barn and get all the milking done. He'd do it alone, milk and clean up, and then when his father went in to start the milking, he'd see it all done. And he would know who had done it.
At a quarter to three, he got up and put on his clothes. He crept downstairs, careful of the creaky boards, and let himself out. The cows accepted him placidly, and he fetched some hay for each and then got the milking pail and the big milk cans.
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 his father who loved him. He finished. The two milk cans were full and he covered them and closed the milk-house door carefully, making sure of the latch. Then he went out of the barn and barred the door behind him.
Back in his room, he had only a minute to pull off his clothes in the darkness and jump into bed, for he heard his father up. He put the covers over his head to silence his quick breathing. The door opened.
"Rob!" his father called. "We have to get up, son, even if it is Christmas."
"Aw-right," he said sleepily.
"I'll go on out," his father said. "I'll get things started."
The door closed and he lay still, laughing to himself. In just a few minutes his father would know. His dancing heart was ready to jump from his body.
The minutes were endless — ten, fifteen, he did not know how many — and he heard his father's footsteps again. The door opened, and he lay still.
"Rob!"
"Yes, Dad?"
His father was laughing — a sobbing sort of a laugh. "Thought you'd fool me, did you?" His father was standing beside his bed, feeling for him, pulling away the cover.
"It's for Christmas, Dad!"
He found his father and clutched him in a great hug. He felt his father's arms go around him. It was dark, and they could not see each other's faces.
"Son, I thank you. Nobody ever did a nicer thing — "
"Oh, Dad, I want you to know — I do want to be good!" The words broke from him of their own will. He did not know what to say. His heart was bursting with love.
"Well, I reckon I can go back to bed and sleep," his father said after a moment. "Wait! I hear the little ones. Theyve awakened. Come to think of it, son, I've never seen you children when you first saw the Christmas tree. I was always in the barn. Come on!"
He got up and pulled on his clothes again, and they went down to the Christmas tree. Oh, what a Christmas, and how his heart had nearly burst again with shyness and pride as his father told his mother and made the younger children listen about how he, Rob, had got up all by himself.
"The best Christmas gift I ever had, and I'll remember it, son, every year on Christmas morning, so long as I live."
They had both remembered it, and now that his father was dead he remembered it alone: that blessed Christmas dawn when, alone with the cows in the barn, he had made his first gift of true love.
Wrote the poet:
Let us keep Christmas
And keep it so well
That our hearts are a home
Where the Savior may dwell.
May this be our Christmas gift, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
