Taylor Caldwell

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

Agnes M. Pharo

Bob Hope

It was the week before Christmas.  I was baby-sitting with our four older children while my wife took the baby for his check-up.  (Baby-sitting to me means reading the paper while the kids mess up the house).

Only that day I wasn't reading.  I was fuming.  On every page of the paper, as I flicked angrily through them, gifts glittered and reindeer pranced, and I was told that there were only six more days in which to rush out and buy what I couldn't afford and nobody needed.  What, I asked myself indignantly, did the glitter and the rush have to do with the birth of Christ?

There was a knock on the door of the study where I had barricaded myself.  Then Nancy's voice, "Daddy, we have a play to put on.  Do you want to see it?"

I didn't.  But I had fatherly responsibilities so I followed her into the living room.  Right away I knew it was a Christmas play for at the foot of the piano stool was a lighted flashlight wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a shoe box.

Rex (age six) came in wearing my bath robe and carrying a mop handle.  He sat on the stool, looked at the flashlight.  Nancy (ten) draped a sheet over her head, stood behind Rex and began, "I'm Mary and this boy is Joseph.  Usually in this play Joseph stands up and Mary sits down.  But Mary sitting down is taller than Joseph standing up so we thought it looked better this way."

Enter Trudy (four) at a full run.  She never has learned to walk.  There were pillowcases over her arms.  She spread them wide and said only, "I'm an angel."

Then came Anne (eight).  I knew right away she represented a wise man.  In the first place she moved like she was riding a camel (she had on her mother's high heels).  And she was bedecked with all the jewelry available.  On a pillow she carried three items, undoubtedly gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

She undulated across the room, bowed to the flashlight, to Mary, to Joseph, to the angel, and to me and then announced, "I am all three wise men.  I bring precious gifts:  gold, circumstance, and mud."

That was all.  The play was over.  I didn't laugh.  I prayed.  How near the truth Anne was!  We come at Christmas burdened down with gold--with the showy gift and tinsely tree.  Under the circumstances we can do no other, circumstances of our time and place and custom.  And it seems a bit like mud when we think of it.

But I looked at the shining faces of my children, as their audience of one applauded them, and remembered that a Child showed us how these things can be transformed.  I remembered that this Child came into a material world and in so doing eternally blessed the material.  He accepted the circumstances, imperfect and frustrating, into which he was born, and thereby infused them with the divine.  And as for mud--to you and me it may be something to sweep off the rug, but to all children it is something to build with.

Children see so surely through the tinsel and the habit and the earthly, to the love which, in them all, strains for expression.

Christmas is for love.  It is for joy, for giving and sharing, for laughter, for reuniting with family and friends, for tinsel and brightly decorated packages.  But mostly, Christmas is for love.  I had not believed this until a small elf-like student with wide-eyed innocent eyes and soft rosy cheeks gave me a wondrous gift one Christmas.

Mark was an 11-year-old orphan who lived with his aunt, a bitter middle-aged woman greatly annoyed with the burden of caring for her dead sister's son.  She never failed to remind young Mark, if it hadn't been for her generosity, he would be a vagrant, homeless waif.  Still, with all the scolding and chilliness at home, he was a sweet and gentle child.

I had not noticed Mark particularly until he began staying after class each day (at the risk of arousing his aunt's anger, I later found) to help me straighten up the room.  We did this quietly and comfortably, not speaking much, but enjoying the solitude of that hour of the day.  When we did talk, Mark spoke mostly of his mother.  Though he was quite small when she died, he remembered a kind, gentle, loving woman, who always spent much time with him.

As Christmas drew near however, Mark failed to stay after school each day.  I looked forward to his coming, and when the days passed and he continued to scamper hurriedly from the room after class, I stopped him one afternoon and asked why he no longer helped me in the room.  I told him how I had missed him, and his large gray eyes lit up eagerly as he replied, "Did you really miss me?"

I explained how he had been my best helper.  "I was making you a surprise," he whispered confidentially.  "It's for Christmas."  With that, he became embarrassed and dashed from the room.  He didn't stay after school any more after that.

Finally came the last school day before Christmas.  Mark crept slowly into the room late that afternoon with his hands concealing something behind his back.  "I have your present," he said timidly when I looked up.  "I hope you like it."  He held out his hands, and there lying in his small palms was a tiny wooden box.

"Its beautiful, Mark.  Is there something in it?"  I asked opening the top to look inside. "

"Oh you can't see what's in it," he replied, "and you can't touch it, or taste it or feel it, but mother always said it makes you feel good all the time, warm on cold nights, and safe when you're all alone."

I gazed into the empty box.  "What is it Mark," I asked gently, "that will make me feel so good?"  "It's love," he whispered softly, "and mother always said it's best when you give it away."  And he turned and quietly left the room.

So now I keep a small box crudely made of scraps of wood on the piano in my living room and only smile as inquiring friends raise quizzical eyebrows when I explain to them that there is love in it.

Yes, Christmas is for gaiety, mirth and song, for good and wondrous gifts. But mostly, Christmas is for love.

It's just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree.  No name, no identification, no inscription.  It has peeked through the branches of our tree at this time of the year for the past 10 years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas.  Oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it.  You know, the overspending, the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma, the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth.  I reached for something special just for Mike.  The inspiration came in an unusual way.

Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended.  Shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner city church.  The kids were mostly African-American.

These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.

As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without head gear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears.  It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously couldn't afford.  Well, we ended up walloping them.  We took every weight class.  And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat.

Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, "I wish just one of them could have won," he said.  "They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them."  Mike loved kids--all kids.  He understood kids in competitive situations, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse.  That's when the idea for his present came.

That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner city church.  On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me.

His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years.  For each Christmas, I followed the tradition--one year sending a group of mentally challenged youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas--on and on. . . .

The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas.  It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure.  Still, the story doesn't end there.

You see, we lost Mike last year due to cancer.  When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up.  Yet Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.  Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad.

The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further, with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation, watching as their fathers take down their envelopes.

Mike's spirit, like the spirit of Christmas, will always be with us.