Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas treasures in poetry and prose has found its way onto the Internet for Winter, Christmas, the birth of Christ, Santa Claus, and so much more..Christmas Additions
An addition for one Christmas was Marion, our Scottish foster daughter who spent her first Yuletide with us. I shall never forget the glow of happiness on that little face as she helped trim the tree and opened her gifts. How that child relished oranges! Oranges are so plentiful in California that we are prone to take them for granted. But I do believe that child’s Yule tree was the one in our front yard, loaded with oranges!
Then came the Christmas in Chatsworth, with another new “little pixie” hanging ornaments on the tall tree in the den, and piping a little “sing-song” Korean rendition of “Silent Night” - little Debbie! She and Dodie wanted, and got, shiny red “trikes” and little baby dolls that cried very wee wet tears…
We had nine for breakfast that Christmas morning, around the huge, round oaken table, and of course, seven of them were too excited to eat! Tom and Barbara, Mindy and Candy, Grandma Smith, and “Uncle Son,” my brother Hillman, and Mammy and Grampy Slye came for dinner and rounded out the family, as well as five of our old “stand-by,” or “on-the-loose” friends-so the place was really jumping with joy. You need something like that, at Christmas; you need to share it with a crowd. The Bethlehem stable was crowded, you know: Christ was not born in obscurity.
As I watched little Debbie chatting happily with Dodie and busy with her toys, I felt a twinge of sadness for those countless other children in Korea, and I wished I might have them all here, too. But I thanked God that day for Dr. Bob Pierce and his World Vision, Inc., which makes Christmas really Christmas for those orphans of the storm by providing foster parents for them in America. Yes, Christmas is always it goes on, and on … in people like this Christmas is always.
One day we all took a ride on the ski lift on Mount Summit, riding in pairs in the little suspended chairs which scaled the mountain. The higher we got, the colder and more beautiful it became. Our ascent was very slow in comparison with the descent of those who went down on their skis, just under the cars in which we rode. What a parallel to life! To climb requires effort and persistence; to slide down, no effort at all…
At the top we jumped out of the chairs and ran into a warm “sky house” where we drank hot chocolate and warmed our toes at the big, old-fashioned, round iron stove. The children were delighted with the little snow-covered “Christmas trees” which we 0-zsaw on the way up-and there were so many! Roy said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have one like that for Christmas, with real snow on it?” I thought of the sixteenth verse of Psalm 147: “He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.”
Giving, Always, God is giving. Not just on one day do His gifts arrive, but always … constantly . . . day by day . . . hour by hour. … He causes Christmas to happen with the spectacle of little snow-covered trees on mountainsides, in August and July; He trims them with a color and a glory that make our hearts leap up as we behold them. He gives unstintingly and constantly of Christmas beauty to us all, if we have but eyes to see. . . .
So Christmas has been for me, so it has “grown and developed from my childhood days. So, I think, God intended it to be: an unfolding, growing lesson in love. And as I have grown, I have come to understand that this great love must be practiced not just on December 25, but every day in God’s year.
