Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Magic

  ~From the television show My So-Called Life

  Standing precariously on a stool in my office, I found the Christmas boxes high on a back shelf. It was time to transform our home into the magic colors of the “love season.” Somehow I never can enter into the spirit of things until I set my own stage, so I slid the boxes to the carpet and knelt to explore once again the scented candles, satin balls and sparkling ornaments that have hung every year upon our tree. Separating the strings of tiny colored lights, I leaned to plug in the first strand. On it came! Glancing at the box once again, my eyes fell upon something tucked in the bottom corner. There was a red candle. Next to it, folded in yellow tissue, were four dimes and, underneath these things, lay an old magazine. I rocked back on my heels and, while the lights burned on, my mind relived the events that led these things to be in my possession.

  I once knew a woman who had very little in the way of material possessions. Her clothes were clean but faded. She ironed other people’s clothes to make money for her children. There was no car so she walked everywhere, and thus her shoes were worn and cracked. She and her two children lived in a tiny corner house that had once been white and they all slept in one bedroom.

  I met her through her little boy who used to come into my pet store after school. He loved animals and I would pay him a little to “help me” by sweeping the floor. He brought his mom around to see me one wintry day and I liked her and, since I was nice to her child, she liked me. Mothers are like that.

  When Christmas came, she appeared in my store, smiling and red-cheeked, with a gift for me. Wrapped in a newspaper were three things—a red candle never lit, four dimes wrapped in tissue and a magazine. She asked if I would open it so she could explain it to me. Blinking back tears, I listened as she said that the red candle would bring light in my life. The four dimes were to be distributed to my four children, and, in the magazine was an article she’d found about the true meaning of giving and loving one another. Never had I received such a wondrous gift as this or one with as much heart. She stood silently, hoping I’d accept her humble offering of friendship. I could not close the space between us quickly enough and, with my arms around her, I told her I was honored and would keep them always.

  And I have. Every year, I lovingly place the red candle, the four dimes and the magazine under our tree to remind us of the value of relationships and of giving of ourselves. And I can tell you that amid all the gaily wrapped gifts piled high each year, these precious gifts from my friend so long ago help to keep Christmas in its proper perspective for me. It is too easy to fall prey to materialistic advertising, too easy to get entangled with spending “enough” on each person on your list, too easy to get tight as a rubber band on a slingshot because you’ve spent yourself and your pocketbook too thin. It is too easy to forget that this is the “love season.”

  So, once again this year, I have placed these three gifts under our tree to remind us that the true reason we celebrate Christmas has nothing to do with money. These are really hard times and, more than likely, there will be fewer gifts under your tree and mine but that is okay. Maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to be a blessing, not that we have less but that we may celebrate Christmas this year with a clearer perspective.

  ~Jean Brody

  The Gift of Forgiveness

  Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

  ~Paul Boese

  The last group of guests bumped merrily out our front door and down the steps. I stood in the open doorway answering the final round of good wishes as our visitors, walking down our front sidewalk to their cars, turned back to wave. Their voices sounded crisp in the newly arrived frigid air of early December. A full moon climbed high in the dark slate sky. I eased the glass storm door shut, and it instantly frosted up as the warm air of our living room hit the icy cold surface. Now, all I could see outside were the hazy gleam of headlights flashing on as our friends started their cars, and the brightly hued blur of Christmas bulbs on the bush just outside our door.

  I shut the heavy inside door and turned into our living room. My husband, Mike, bit the leg off a gingerbread man and grinned at me as he sank down onto the couch. “Well,” I said as I plunked down beside him, “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” A decorated tree next to the fireplace shimmered with tiny white lights, and a row of candles glowed along the mantel. Gifts wrapped in gorgeous holiday paper and tied with red, green, cobalt blue, or fuchsia metallic ribbon were piled beneath the tree. On some packages, I’d attached a jingle bell or two. Candlelight flickered on the dining room table, glinting off shiny glass Christmas bulbs placed among crystal pedestal cake plates and silver platters that still displayed an abundance of holiday cookies. The scent of cinnamon and cloves from hot apple cider perfumed the air, and the coffee urn emitted its own pleasant and comforting fragrance. Since I am enthralled with all things Christmas, this was bliss. We sat close and relished the quiet.

  “Hey, how about some fresh air before we start cleaning up?” asked Mike after a time, breaking the spell.

  “Good idea,” I responded, happy to put off the job of restoring order to our kitchen. He rose from the couch and offered me his hand. We pulled coats, hats, gloves, and scarves out of the front closet. “My mother would have liked our party tonight. You know how much she loved all the Christmas hoopla,” I told Mike as we suited up in our warmest winter attire and headed out for a late-night walk. Mike nodded silently, waiting for my cue on the direction of our conversation. My mother died three years ago, in her nineties, and what grieving I did was not so much about losing her, as about never having had her. Burdened with a melancholy outlook for most of her life, she was difficult to please. In my childhood I worked relentlessly, but ineffectively, to satisfy her. Then I worked just as hard in my adulthood to distinguish myself from her and to diminish any similarities between us, in an effort to convince myself that her disapproval of me mattered little.

  Only with her death has our reconciliation begun. A cynic would say that I have fashioned this truce to meet my own needs, a convenient and thoughtful gift from an optimistic mind. However, I know otherwise. I sense her hand in the peacemaking, as I have been inspired to ponder the events of her childhood, a time of which she rarely spoke. Those few memories she chose to share about her youth were never pleasant. My concern has slowly turned from the ways in which she broke me, to the ways in which she may herself have been broken in the decades before my life began.

  As Mike and I hiked through one neighborhood and into another in the brisk air, I absentmindedly led us into the area where I grew up. Hand in hand we traversed the sidewalk bordering the golf course in my childhood neighborhood. We traded stories of earlier Yuletides. “Is there a reason you’re so nuts about Christmas?” he asked.

  I considered the source of the giddiness and sentimentality that overtake me every year as soon as the carcass of the Thanksgiving turkey hits the trash. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about that one.”

  I glanced over at the golf course, which is one block from my childhood home. I described to Mike how, when I was in early grade school, I begged my older brother to take me sledding there on winter afternoons. And how at dusk on Christmas Eve in my youthful years, our parents would send him and me over to these hills with our sleds. On that night we generally had the snowy slopes all to ourselves. We’d make several runs down the double hill, facing a magical spectacle of brightly lit, snow-frosted evergreens in front yards all up and down the blocks bordering that corner of the golf course. My excitement reached a higher level with every speedy descent because I knew that while we were gone, Santa was at our home loading heaps of presents under our Christmas tree. The short trek back to our house after sledding never seemed longer than it did on Christmas Eve.

  It didn’t matter to us that many of those gifts were necessities masquerading in bright gift wrap as luxuries: new underwear, socks, wool gloves, and school supplies. We were all the
more jubilant when one of the boxes contained a toy train or a doll.

  As Mike and I reminisced on our stroll, I realized for the first time the origin of much that I treasure about Christmas. The singing: my mom. The candlelight: my mom. The gift wrapping: my mom. Those tiny white twinkle lights: my mom.

  And so my mother and I continue our reconciliation. As the weather gets colder, I become warmer.

  ~Beverly A. Golberg

  Christmas on Lawrence Street

  I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

  ~Charles Dickens

  Our family changed the day we drove to Lawrence Street. Not any day, mind you—Christmas Day. Determined our three suburban-raised boys would not grow up naive and spoiled, we decided to serve up a slice of real life before feasting on the rest of our holiday. Instead of the early morning race down the stairs to the bulging tree, we dressed, loaded up the car, and took off for the forty-five-minute drive downtown to the rescue mission. Perhaps a look at the homeless would temper the bickering over too many Christmas presents? Maybe stepping into a different life for a few moments would make us more appreciative of our own? The disappointed look on little boy faces told me otherwise.

  I’ve always been a fan of the rescue mission, “fan” being the key word. Like a spectator who never steps on the field, I felt real good about sitting in the bleachers, clapping my hands and cheering them on. Good organization! Great mission! Go, team, go! Somewhere along the way, however, I’d grown dissatisfied with rah-rahing from bleacher seats. I wanted to be in the game, do my part to make a difference.

  Watching my young boys struggle against materialism probably had something to do with it. We live in one of the most affluent communities in Colorado, where the high school parking lot looks like a new car dealership and weekly allowances rival my salary. Trying to withstand the lure of wealth tested each of us. Whether watching TV shows littered with must-have commercials or hanging out with friends boasting an endless collection of toys and gadgets, greed bombarded my children day after day. I want what he has! Why can’t I do what he does?

  Even I felt the pressure to keep up. Materialism seemed to be dragging us down its slippery slope. If I wanted our family to have a heart for the world beyond self and stuff, I needed to do something drastic to counteract the culture. I couldn’t wait for compassion and selflessness to bloom without planting a few seeds of generosity.

  Thus our Christmas morning trip to Lawrence Street. After recovering from their initial disappointment, my boys soon resumed their normal Christmas morning chatter in the backseat. They weren’t happy about the detour, but they tried to make the best of it. I sat in the front seat, thinking about my pajamas and warm cinnamon rolls back at home. I missed the slow pace of our normal Christmas. It surprised me how easily I turned to thoughts of my own comfort. Is giving up one morning of leisure that much of a sacrifice? Had I become consumed with only thoughts of myself?

  My questions were silenced the minute we pulled onto Lawrence Street, for nothing could have prepared our family for what we saw there. In front of beat-up storefronts, loitering below a glowing sign proclaiming “Jesus Saves,” more than one hundred of Denver’s homeless gathered in tattered jackets and worn-out shoes. Hungry. Forgotten. Cold. On Christmas Day. And as I took in the crowd of displaced souls, it hit me: Although Christmas Day is the pinnacle of our year, to the homeless December 25th is simply another agonizing day to fill an empty stomach and warm a cold body.

  With this revelation ringing in my ears, the cacophony of little boy voices in the backseat quieted to a whisper, eventually deadening to silence. A few scruffy-looking men approached our car, probably hoping we had food or a spare blanket. My husband looked at me with a question mark in his eyes: “You ready?”

  Mute, I nodded once and then opened my door. A few feet away a man leaned up against the brick wall of the mission building, his worn clothes layered and filthy. He mumbled something nonsensical, oblivious to our presence. Another man pushed a beat-up cart, full of his treasures, likely someone else’s garbage. I glanced back at the car to see the faces of my boys pressed against the window, looking more like men than children as they took in the scene themselves.

  My husband rang the bell for the mission while I opened the back of our truck. Anxious to help, my boys handed me bags and gifts as I set them on the sidewalk. Soon a couple of mission volunteers arrived to help us unload. Bags of clothes, winter coats, toys, as well as a couple of frozen turkeys including all the makings for a large Christmas dinner. Not nearly enough to meet the needs of the multitude surrounding our car. I felt foolish. Our gift was far too small.

  After emptying our car of everything but ourselves, we offered our warmest “Merry Christmas” and biggest smiles. But like the too-small gifts, even that kindness felt hollow. Our version of “Merry Christmas” differed vastly from that of those on Lawrence Street. After all, in an hour or two we’d be sitting indoors around a tree, opening gifts and stuffing ourselves with enough food for two families. The faces on Lawrence Street would still be searching for a home.

  I climbed back into the front seat and glanced over my shoulder to see quiet boys with sober eyes, serious faces that likely mirrored my own. Nothing needed to be said. The vision on Lawrence Street hit its mark, piercing the heart of every last one of us.

  Yes, our family changed that day. And every December 25th since, as we continue the tradition initiated that first year. While our own gifts sit wrapped and untouched at home, we drive to Lawrence Street to remember those who are too often forgotten and to deliver gifts to those who need them far more than we do. It’s a small effort. We realize that now. But it’s now an expected part of our Christmas celebration, perhaps changing us far more than it changes them.

  We’ve been transformed in other ways, too. Our tree doesn’t bulge as it once did. Our desire for more stuff isn’t as powerful as it once was. At times we’ve left the comfort of home to love the poorest in Africa and Haiti, for a week or two instead of a single morning.

  Still, there are moments when my boys would prefer to sleep in on Christmas morning. And sometimes I think about closing my eyes to the needy and staying home to eat warm cinnamon rolls in my pajamas. But then the faces of Lawrence Street pierce my heart once again. And I realize afresh there is more to Christmas—more to living—than a bulging tree and full stomach. For my greatest satisfaction wasn’t found in stuff or things, but in the gift of an average day spent loving someone else.

  ~Michele Cushatt

  This Christmas Is Different

  If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, I’d have had them first.

  ~Lois Wyse

  This Christmas is different. For so many Christmases past, as our kids grew older, a feeling of bah-humbug was usually experienced. This was especially true when they entered high school and college. Boring and predictable adequately described their wish lists.

  It’s been a long time since we danced down Santa Claus Lane as we watched our giddy little girls sit on Santa’s lap asking for the perfect doll or other must-have toy that we couldn’t wait for them to open on Christmas morning.

  This Christmas is different thanks to the arrival of our very first grandchild. A very Jolly Old St. Nick will be making a stop at our house this year and it doesn’t even matter that the future little believer is still way too little to believe.

  Grandpa and I took a trip to Toys “R” Us the other day because now we have reason to peruse the tot-sized merchandise. What a treat! The rows and rows of toys seemed to stretch for miles, taking us on a jingle bell journey back to yesteryear where the kid in us was once again reborn.

  We headed straight for the infant aisle. I was ready to do some browsing. Oh what fun it is to shop in a great big kiddie store!

  This new grandma was bent on buying my dear grandbaby a toy chest. I settled on a darling pink and purple one with a bench for sitting on.

  My daughter thought
my gift idea was a god one as long as I promised not to go on a merry mission to fill it. I promised—with fingers crossed, of course.

  This Christmas is different. Our family has grown by one and she is the reason our hearts are alive with wonder. She has no clue the giddiness her grandparents feel at sharing her first Christmas with her.

  The only thing better than being a kid at Christmas is being a grandparent at Christmas.

  It’s been quite a long time since Santa and toys have been part of the same sentence at our house.

  Avery will be decked out in a pretty red party dress and black patent leather shoes. She’ll drool between giggles and the smiles she’ll make us work extra hard to coax from her.

  My very best gift this Christmas will come after the presents are opened and the feast of turkey has been eaten. It is then that I’ll steal a quiet moment with my angel of a grandchild. As I rock her in front of the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree, I’ll hum a little lullaby in her ear, as I always do, and from my heart I’ll sing the praises of a loving God who has given us the greatest gift of all—a baby to love, and the opportunity to see life through the eyes of a child once again.

  ~Kathy Whirity

  A Christmas Surprise

  It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

  ~W.T. Ellis

  There is a Christmas I won’t soon forget. It’s not a Christmas with lots of presents, and it’s not a Christmas where large miracles happened, or even where hard circumstances were greatly changed. But it was a Christmas that changed my life, and allowed me to witness firsthand the spirit that lives within many of us.

  This Christmas I speak of, my family and I were far from home, or at least the home I’d known all of my young life. I was eight years old, and a few months before Christmas we had been living in Texas. Times had been tough for us, and try as she might, my mom could not find a way to make a go of it where we were. It was time, she said, to pull up stakes and try our luck somewhere else. So we packed and got ready to leave Texas behind, to build a better life for our family in California.