The Spirit of Christmas Past

This is the time of year that everyone tends to reflect on family, friends, and things that make you smile, ok well most of us.  There are a few grinches and you know who you are.  Those people who think Christmas is a bunch of hooey (don't bother looking that word up, it is only in the southern dictionary).  They complain about having to decorate, the commercialism, the junk they call toys in the stores and the crowds of people who are always in the way.  I used to be one of those people.  Used to be...I have reformed.  My grouchy mood at the Holidays came mostly from being a single mother who didn't have the money to  buy my own son presents let alone the classmate who's name was on a little red piece of paper drawn out of a hat, or my parents and siblings who would all gather under the tree on Christmas morning and exchange expensive trinkets and toys.  I felt cheated and hurt every year.  Until something happened...

It was the year my youngest sister graduated from High School and had decided to move from our then home in Canada, to Alabama where she would attend college and live with relatives.  It was also the year my father decided to go on a Mission Trip for a month to the Ukraine.  This was a year that although the presents would be more lavish than I could ever afford, they would not be outrageously expensive.  This was the year I decided to not only think long and hard about each person I was buying for, but I was also going to do it on a budget of $25.00 for everyone.

Back then, computers and email was a really high tech idea and cellphones were the size of airplanes, ok not that big, but they were huge by today's standards.  Nobody could afford them either, so no one I knew had one.  Pagers were for business men, not latch key kids, and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were still fighting over DOS.  Ok now that you have some idea of how really old I am, on with the story.

I decided to do all my shopping at the Dollar Store.  Not some, ALL!  For my sister, she was setting up a new home in the summer and moving 1000 miles away.  So for her I bought pot holders, and plastic stir spoons, and a couple of picture frames with photos of family already in them.  For my Father who was going to be 6000 miles away, and in very cold weather with rations on food and soap and things like that, I bought things like "Hot Spots" to put in your gloves to keep them warm, safety pins, a loofa ( I call them buffer puffers), and a photo frame with a picture of family already in it.  For my Mother, I bought her a phone card for long distance calls, and a photo frame to put a picture of my Dad in.  For my brother, I bought a game to keep him occupied, and a touque (for those of you who don't know what this is, it is a knitted hat to keep your head and ears warm in the winter.), not much right?

Not much, except that was the Christmas that everyone was thrilled with their presents.  Why?  I didn't spend more than $5.00 on each of them.  I was bewildered to say the least at everyone's reactions at my little tokens for them.  Upon asking my Father why the gift was so great, he told me, "You really thought about what each of us truly needed, and spent what you could to get the perfect gift."

Wow.  It was that moment that something inside me snapped.  All of a sudden Christmas wasn't about the commercialism, or the shopping, or the craziness of the holiday. Suddenly it was all about the people I loved.  My brother asked me how I knew he needed the touque.  I told him that it was simple.  The last time he came to visit me I noticed how red his ears were from the cold and that told me that he didn't have anything to keep them warm. Trust me when it is 10 below Zero, if you have a touque, you wear a touque!  That Christmas for me was the beginning of something big.  Something entirely life changing.

In recent years I have been known to decorate my house with dancing lights to music, give presents bought at the store and homemade, and I have even done a few voice over's for Children's Christmas Books. I don't just give someone a present to be included in the festivities or because it is the latest toy craze (which will only last about a day if the toy lasts that long).  Now I give a gift because someone needs it.  And honestly if they don't need anything (that I know of), I give someone else a gift in their name.  Someone who was like me once.  Frustrated and frozen out of the Christmas Season because of hard times, no money and the whole idea of giving anything to anyone who won't appreciate it anyway. And you know what?  I married a man who does the same thing.

As a Christian, I believe that is what God would want me to do during this season of over spending and over eating and over doing everything.  God's gift to us was so simple, yet so powerful.  He gave us Jesus.

That too entirely changed my life.