I learned recently that there was a time when Christmas was not the biggest holiday of the year. Easter was the largest celebration among Christian households.
It was in fact retail stores who brought a great deal of hype to Christmas, creating characters such as Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to boost sales. The economy brought about this enormous celebration even though St. Nicholas in some form or another had been visiting children to leave gifts for centuries before.
In early America, children were left fruit in their stockings hanging from the mantle because such a treat in the dead of winter was rare. And the gift giving grew from there. It is an ancient tradition to give gifts at Christmas, dating back to those three kings or wise men who showed up at the stable to offer gifts to a child in a manger after traveling from afar.
And for this reason, the act of giving gifts holds a much deeper meaning than what is hidden behind the fancy wrapping. It symbolizes an offering of love, joy, and appreciation for those we have been blessed to hold dear.
Last year I was surprised by an unusual gift I was not expecting. It was my last year of work before retirement, and I was feeling a tug of sadness that I would no longer have this festive time with co-workers. One of my fellow instructional coaches brought in a gift at our December meeting and left it by my seat, saying she would explain it to me later.
My birthday is in December, but I doubted she knew this. Then I thought maybe she had heard I was retiring, but that was several months away.
After the meeting I opened the card inside and read something that brought tears to my eyes. Kylie had lost her older sister a few years before to cancer. Her birthday was in December, so each year for her sister's birthday she celebrated it by giving a gift to a lady she found to be strong, loving, and kind, much like her sister had been. By doing this she was able to continue the celebration of her sister's birthday.
As far as I was concerned the bag could have contained a box of coals. Those would have been the most cherished coals I could have owned. The thought that I held center stage with another woman who must have been so dynamic her little sister wanted to carry on this tradition moved me beyond words. Her gift found a wonderful place in my home, and the card remained on my desk in my home office the entire year. Every now and then when I was feeling down or beating myself up over not feeling quite "good enough" I would open that card and read it again. It never failed to wipe away my doubts and put wind back in my sails.
You see, it really isn't about the gift, and after this gesture I understood that more than ever before. The beauty and love in that gift just kept right on giving like the love she shared with her sister and still shares to this day. The gift in the giving is symbolic of the gift of that child in the manger, Jesus, who would grow to gift us with the greatest blessing of all, Life. Life to be celebrated with those we hold dear on Earth and in Heaven.
