As a small child Christmas was such a special time for me.

One year my siblings and I had been told by our cousins that there really was no Santa Claus but that it was just our Mom and Dad playing a role. Somehow Mom and Dad found out how disallusioned we were and that particular year they took the time to make the deer prints and the sleigh skids in our front yard of heavy fallen snow and Daddy walked in single tracks with his big work boots into our house and back out since we had no chimney for Santa to come down.

We woke up the next morning just overjoyed with the newly ignited belief that Santa was real. We went back to our cousins bragging about how real Santa was and how they were badly mistaken!

We also grew up with an intense knowledge of Jesus Christ and there was never any doubt as to why we really have Christmas and Santa was just filled to overflowing with God’s love and shared that love with children and by giving.

We were poor but not such that we forgot others at Christmas. I remember Mom giving each of us kids a twenty dollar bill and taking us in the Ben Franklin store on the square and telling us that we were expected to pick out something for each person in our immediate family, make our own purchase, carry our bag of treasures home and wrap our own gifts in private and put them under our tree at home. I learned all my wrapping skills by watching Mr. Carlock wrap all Mom’s purchases at the Jenkins and Darwins store that was also on the square.

I don’t think the real meaning of Christmas hit home to me until the year that Danny was 16 and Mark and I were really struggling financially and all we could afford that year under the tree for our kids was socks and underwear and that was all.

On Christmas Eve of that year that I speak of, my Aunt Leretha and Uncle James came by early in the evening and gave each of us our Christmas money envelopes with a ten dollar bill inside just like they always did each year.

After my aunt and uncle left that night our four kids went into the bedroom and shut the door. In just a few minutes the older three came out and said that they had to go to the store for a minute and would be right back. Danny was the driver as he had just recently got a driver’s license. In just a few minutes they returned as promised and nabbed our youngest son and went back in that bedroom and shut the door again and when they came out the three older kids said they had to go back to town as they forgot something. We did think their behavior was very odd but let them go as we suspected it all had something to do with Christmas and after all it was Christmas Eve.

We had a tradition in our family since our kids were older that we would stay up on Christmas Eve until one minute after midnight and then open our gifts as it was then Christmas morning and after that we would all go to bed and sleep late…. it worked out perfectly!

As we opened our gifts that night the kids were bursting with excitement as we found out what all the secrecy had been about. The  pow wow in the bedroom had been to pool their money envelope ten dollar bills together and buy Mom and Dad a gift as we had no gifts under the tree but our youngest at first wouldn’t fork over his money so the older three took off and found the Worley Brother’s drug store still open up by Jerry’s IGA and proceeded to buy me a new Bible there and picked out something for their Dad but didn’t have enough money for his gift so they hurried back and thus the second pow wow in the bedroom and this time they really put pressure on little brother to hand over his money and they took off towards town again. By the time they reached Worley’s drug store it had closed and the BP station was all that was still open so there they bought 2 cans of oil for Mark and a can of WD40 and hurried back.

As we opened gifts that night to all of this and to my shame of them just getting nothing but socks and underwear and seeing that they really didn’t care but wanted us to have a Christmas it melted my heart so much. After they all went to bed, I sat here in the living room  and bawled my eyes out and wrote out a Christmas Card of love to them and placed it in the branches of our tree for them to find the next morning.

Of all the magical Christmases that I have ever had, that year lives in my heart as my most cherished one. Our children gave all they had to us with no thought of anything in return.

God gave all He had to us when His only son came down to earth as a tiny baby in a manger  to offer each of us the gift of salvation and it is all free for whoever is willing to accept the gift!

As an adult now and a woman of quite a few years I realize that God’s Christmas gift is my greatest treasure of my life! I have a Savior, a comforter, a friend, a compassionate listener, a loving corrector, an unfailing love of mine that carries me at times when I can’t even walk. He has been with me through every trial and every blessing of my life and as I write this with tears streaming down my face I want that for you too!

Merry Christmas every one! May the love of Christ find it’s way into your heart this Christmas!