“Well, that, and because you don’t have a bicycle.” A wry grin crossed his face. “Then again, who knows? We haven’t looked everywhere yet. Should we go on a hunt?”
I smiled at him. “We can wait, Grandpa. Everything I really need is right here.”
A broad smile filled my grandfather’s face, and his eyes shone. “Well said, Eddie. Well said.”
Shortly after breakfast, Grandpa led us all out to the barn. He was more excited than I was. With great fanfare, he unveiled the bike. Just as he himself had trained me, I acted surprised. I thanked everyone profusely, complimented Grandpa on his fine taste in two-wheelers, and asked how he’d been able to completely surprise me. In spite of my fine acting, Grandpa could tell that I’d known about the bicycle. I knew it irked him, since he didn’t know how I could have found out. It was better than beating him at cards—which, of course, I couldn’t have done, considering that all of the hearts from his favorite deck were wedged into the spokes.
Later that afternoon, as the snow fell peacefully outside, I lay near the fire next to my mom, listening to a Burl Ives Christmas record. She ran her long fingers through my hair. “This has been the most wonderful Christmas,” she said wistfully.
“It has,” I said. “Just like old times.”
She laughed. “You’re only twelve, Eddie. You don’t have any ‘old times.’”
We both laughed. Then I said, “Mom…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for all you do for me. For how much you work and change your schedule to be with me.”
“How did you know I did that?”
“I just don’t say thank you enough.”
She looked at me and her eyes filled. “Do you know why I do it, Eddie?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my greatest joy, Eddie. You’re my joy.”
The Way It Begins…
My grandfather’s full name was Edward Lee Janssen, and he was indeed my summertime best friend. While the middle name on my birth certificate reads just “Lee,” I’ve always insisted on using “Edward Lee” throughout my life. In fact, all of my friends, and even my children, believe that “Glenn Edward Lee Beck” is my legal name.
I am “Eddie,” and I grew up in a small town called Mount Vernon, Washington. My mother’s name was Mary, and she died when I was thirteen, not long after giving me a Christmas sweater that I threw on the floor.
My grandparents were very much like those described in the book. My grandfather was a great man and a great friend.
My father, though, was not missing in my life, as he was in this book. While he was always there for me, he and I were never close until later in life, when I sobered up, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and started to count my blessings. It was then that I called my father and told him that I didn’t know how to be his son. He told me that he felt the same way, but added that if I would promise to sit through the awkward silence, we would figure it out. His words still bring tears to my eyes as I write them today.
I did as he asked, and I am so proud that we survived the awkward silences. My father has been the best friend I’ve ever had, and it has been the best fifteen years of our lives.
Our family bakery really was called City Bakery, and my father really was more like a craftsman than a baker. On a trip back home during the summer of 2007, I noticed that Mount Vernon’s downtown was coming back to life. The mall that had driven shops like ours out of business had been torn down and replaced with an even bigger mall. I didn’t go in; I’d already seen malls exactly like it in a hundred other towns.
Russell is a compilation of several of my life’s most vital elements. There is a real man named Russell (minus the sepia tone), who lived next door to my grandparents. He has all the kindness and wisdom of a farmer who’s worked with his hands his whole life. I decided to use him as a model for the character when, during that trip back home, I visited the street where my grandparents lived in Puyallup, Washington. Russell was still living next door, long after my grandparents had passed. He showed me a willow tree that he had planted from a branch my grandmother had given him when I was very small. It now shades his backyard.
Russell is also a grateful tip-of-the-hat to my dear friend Pat Gray. Many of you have heard me talk of him often on radio, TV, and in my stage shows. I met Pat later in life, and he guided me through some of my darkest days and gave me the greatest gift anyone can give: faith.
But the biggest part of Russell came from a dream that I had in my midthirties. The cornfield scene was real for me, as was the color and warmth on the other side. It was sacred, and it completely changed my life. I believe this is the reason, as I told you in the prologue, that the book wrote itself.
While I didn’t know at the time who Russell was in my dream, I feel that I do know now. But who he is to you is something that only you can decide.
That dream and Russell are not just mine, and neither is the cornfield. We all find ourselves there at some point. Yet I fear that far too many of us waste our lives standing in that darkness and cold because we can’t put our past behind us and take that first step into the unknown. We either don’t know, or don’t believe, that there is beauty and happiness for us just on the other side of fear.
I am an alcoholic. I buried my guilt, pain, and feelings for so long that they would have killed me if I had not had this dream. I only wish it had happened when I was thirteen, like it did for Eddie.
Unfortunately, I had many more mistakes to make before I was driven to my knees and finally pled, “Your will, not mine.” I was in my midthirties and had been working on healing myself for more than a year. I thought I was making good progress, but it turns out there were places that I just wasn’t willing to go.
I was tired. Tired of soul-searching, tired of remembering, tired of looking at things I’d spent a lifetime avoiding. Without consciously deciding to, I found myself willing to stand in the cornfield with just a few answers because it was off the highway and relatively safe. Yet, in retrospect, it was more.
I wonder sometimes how many of us don’t face ourselves because we are convinced that we’re worthy of only a certain level of happiness. We are limited by our imaginations and thoughts of worthiness and joy. We become comfortable in our misery because it is all we know. Or maybe it’s just that we don’t look for the “real” us because we’re afraid that there isn’t any real us to find.
One night I had a dream: The broken road. The dying cornfield. A storm unlike anyone should ever have to witness with their own eyes. Nowhere to go.
Then an old, mysterious man showed me the way.
I woke from this dream at three o’clock in the morning and immediately went to get my paints to try to re-create the scene on both sides of the storm. Despite my very best efforts, I just couldn’t get it quite right. I have tried and failed many times since. I wonder if even in this book I have really captured the coldness of the cornfield, the true warmth of Eddie’s experience on the other side of the storm, and the light of the stranger this book calls Russell.
Maybe it was never meant to be fully re-created. Just like in my dream, maybe we are supposed to see only a hint of the message and messenger and leave the rest to faith.
In the final pages Eddie is given a second chance. That, my friend, is a gift to me and from me to you. It is the real gift that I now see as represented by that last present I received from my mother. It is the understanding that you can be forgiven, that you can start over, and that if you face your greatest fears and regrets, the sky will open up and you will find happiness and love. It is the key to breaking the chain of regret and misery.
My mom gave me the sweater, but the greatest gift was given to all of us by a loving Father in Heaven. It is the only true gift ever given to all and yet opened or appreciated by so few. It is the gift of redemption and atonement, and it sits on the top shelf, largely untouched, in the closets of our soul.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, but
by doing so, sometimes we miss the real meaning of the season. It is what that infant, boy, and then perfect man did at the end of His ministry that makes the birth so special.
Without His death, the birth is meaningless.
For years, I didn’t believe in redemption as anything other than a word you hear from a preacher. I didn’t think it was real. Even if it was, I didn’t think I was worthy. That is a lie.
It is real.
It’s not just a word; it is a life-changing force. I am worthy.
You are worthy.
We all are.
I guess the real lesson I learned that last Christmas with my mother was that the greatest gift is any gift that is given with love. I so clearly remember the look in her eyes as she saw my sweater rolled up in a ball on the floor of my room, and I remember realizing all that she had done for that gift. I refuse to stand at His feet and see Him with the same look in His eyes as he asks me, “Son, is that the gift I gave you?”
Pick up your redemption. Cherish it. Wear it. Share it. It has the power to transform lives. It has transformed mine.
I finally know who I am, and I am happy. As I write these final words in bed well after 2:00 a.m. just outside New York City, I realize how many times I would have given anything to be able to live back on that simple street. My grandparents and everyone else who lived there still stand out as the most successful people I’ve ever met. They had everything they needed, but, more important, they wanted everything they had.
For much of my life I fought with guilt over the way I treated my childhood sweater and the events surrounding that Christmas morning. I could never give a sweater away, no matter how ugly, old, or small it was. I clung to drawers full of them, in every shape and size you can imagine.
Fortunately I got past that after I faced my storm. The old man in my dream was right once again: It wasn’t as bad as I thought.
I eventually gave all my sweaters to Goodwill, and I am completely at peace with it. I found that I didn’t need them anymore, because it’s so warm here….
It is just so warm.
Merry Christmas,
Glenn-Edward Lee-Beck
Acknowledgments
I find that every time I try to write acknowledgments for a book, I end up feeling just like my mother must’ve felt that Christmas morning when I left my sweater in a ball on the floor. I always hope not to disappoint, but I know that I always will. As soon as I send this off to my publisher, more faces and names that I’d somehow forgotten inevitably will come to mind.
In some ways I guess it’s a good problem to have. It’s a healthy reminder that I am on the other side of my storm only because of all the amazing friends who’ve helped me along the way. It’s also a reminder that I play a very small role in my own success.
Thank you all for giving me the second greatest gifts there are: your trust, friendship, support, and, most important, your love.
Tania Beck
My children
All my parents
Claire McCabe
Pat Gray
Robert and Colleen Shelton
Roy Klingler and Family
Michelle Gray
Coletta Maier and Family
Jeff Chilson
David and Joanne Bauer
Jeremy and Makell Boyd
Bobby Dreese
Bruce Kelly
Jim Lago
Carma Sutherland
Robert and Juaniece Howell
Jon Huntsman
Bill Thomas
David Neeleman
Jaxson Hunter
Gary and Cathy Crittenden
My home ward
All my friends in Sumner, WA
Chris Balfe
Kevin Balfe
Stu Burguiere
Adam Clarke
Dan Andros
Rich Bonn
Liz Julis
Carolyn Polke
Joe Kerry
John Carney
Sarah Sullivan
Jeremy Price
Christina Guastella
Kelly Thompson
Kristyn Ort
Chris Brady
Nick Daley
Pat Balfe
Eric Chase
Conway Cliff
Virginia Leahy
John Bobey
My television and radio crews
My floor and makeup crew
Mark Mays
John Hogan
Charlie Rahilly
Dan Yukelson
Dan Metter
Julie Talbott
Gabe Hobbs
Kraig Kitchin
Brian Glicklich
George Hiltzik
Matthew Hiltzik
Dom Theodore
Carolyn Reidy
Louise Burke
Mitchell Ivers
Sheri Dew
Duane Ward
Joel Cheatwood
Jim Walton
Ken Jautz
Josanne Lopez
Lori Mooney
Greg Noack
The listeners, viewers, and readers
The insiders
City Bakery (1898–2006)
Richard Paul Evans
Jason Wright
Marcus Luttrell
Greg and Donna Stube
Paul and Angel Harvey
Thomas S. Monson
Russell Ballard
Neil Cavuto
Anderson Cooper
Brad Thor
Don Brenner
Albert Ahronheim
David Marcucci
Blake Ragghianti
Anthony Newett
A Special Message from Glenn
In The Christmas Sweater, Eddie’s trials begin when his father succumbs to cancer. I didn’t select that disease by accident. Almost all of us know someone who has been affected by it in some way, and I am no different; my grandfather had cancer. But I chose cancer for another reason as well—because of someone who I believe will cure it.
His name is Jon Huntsman, and I consider him a role model, an inspiration, and a friend.
Mr. Huntsman grew up in a two-room house with cardboard walls and outdoor plumbing. His family struggled for every penny they made and every bite of food they ate. But now, decades later, he’s traded in that two-room shack for a spot on the Forbes 400 list. Mr. Huntsman is a billionaire.
While he may not be a household name, the products he’s dreamed up over the years have changed the way we live. From the first Big Mac containers to egg cartons, to plastic bowls, dishes, and forks, Huntsman Chemical went from nothing to the largest privately held chemical company in the world.
But Jon Huntsman isn’t an inspiration to me because of the amazing things his company has produced or how much money he’s made. He’s an inspiration for how much he’s giving away: all of it.
Though involved in many charities, Mr. Huntsman’s passion is the Huntsman Cancer Institute and Hospital that he founded in Salt Lake City. It’s a place where patients are treated like family, and family members of patients are treated like royalty. But more important, it’s a place where everyone is treated with love and respect—two things that are in short supply these days.
When I visited the institute for the first time, I told Mr. Huntsman that I’d never seen anything like it before. “I know,” he replied, obviously used to hearing that kind of reaction. “We’re going to cure cancer and then we’re going to turn this place into a Ritz Carlton.”
He smiled, and I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. Then he looked at me with zeal in his eyes and determination on his face. “Glenn,” he said firmly and without an ounce of hesitation, “we are going to cure cancer here.” It wasn’t what he said but how he said it—humble, almost casual, yet full of fierce and overwhelming confidence.
I believe him.
If your own success in life has made you fortunate enough to be able to help others, then please consider taking a look at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Read about their mission
and their facility, but, above all, read about Jon Huntsman, a self-made billionaire who intends to die penniless in the service of others. He is someone who has accomplished almost everything he has ever set his mind to, and I know he will accomplish that as well.
Mr. Huntsman has given away more than $1.2 billion in the last decade. Yet no matter how broke he is when he eventually passes on, he will always be a living example of Russell. And he will always be the richest man I’ve ever met.
—Glenn
For more information, please visit
www.huntsmanscancerfoundation.org.
Glenn Beck, The Christmas Sweater
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