Love Came Down at Christmas

REFLECTIONS
December 24, 2008

What is you earliest memory of Christmas? Mine is 1953. I was four years old and we lived in Winsted, Connecticut. Pushing six decades removed, the memories are still quite vivid. My slightly older sisters, Peggy and Kim teaching me to make snow angels, and pushing me in a sleigh. The water in the lake seeming imposing, lapping over the highway, as we drove to and from town. I have clear recollection of family car trips to New York so we could see Rockefeller Center, with its enormous Christmas tree and the shops filled with displays grand, and otherworldly to my young eyes. I remember stringing popcorn to put on the tree and not doing it well enough to be allowed to continue. Remember I was four.

The picture I have in my head of Christmas morning is first that it finally came. For the young it takes so long, where as when we mature it just seems it was a couple of months ago. We had just moved a few weeks earlier from Michigan so Mom and Dad had our presents in a moving container. Literally a barrel was opened and our presents were handed to us. I don’t remember the explanation in detail of how Santa knew we had moved; the presents were proof enough for me. I cannot recall a single gift, but I can tell you I experienced belonging, love and generosity. A truly gracious style of giving which my parents, Mary and Charles exhibited over and over again. Some things I still have; the Puch Burgmeister ten speed bike for my twelfth Christmas. The Craftsman tools I was given for my sixteenth birthday and Christmas. However, among the most treasured of gifts, is something that I gave, rather than received. The first gift I purchased for my mother with my own money was an amber candy dish. It had a cover and clear glass for accent. It cost $9.95 at Virginia’s Gift shop at Knott’s Berry Farm. When she died it came back to me. It wasn’t valuable or elegant, but it was hers and more important, occupied a prominent place in her living room for twenty-five years, so I am grateful to have it. I treasure it in some manner because it represents more than a days labor for me at that time, but mostly as any Momma’s boy can attest because my Mom liked it, kept it and showed it off.

The specific value of the gifts we give and receive at Christmas cannot be measured in cost or origin of purchase, but rather in the reception and ultimate appreciation of the gift. Sort of like the story of a gift coming in the form of a baby. The five star hotel was full, so the parents stayed in a stable, filling the animals feed trough with hay. With the bleating of animals and the must of the stable floor in our memories, we tell this story each Christmas. To remind us and to announce to the world, that in the end, love, not expense makes the value of the gift.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601