With a year of lay-offs, shut downs, plunging stock market prices, wage freezes, cutbacks and any number of other income depleting tricks, all the Whos down in Whoville are waking up to the Grinch’s attempt to steal Christmas.
Be wise like the Whos. Don’t cry and commiserate, regroup and remember that presents, decorations and the roast beast do not make Christmas happen. The Grinch failed to steal the joy from Whoville, and he can not steal it from Youville, either.
Only a mean, little heart – two sizes too small – would refuse to celebrate Christmas – the kind of heart found in a person such as the White Witch in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” who made it “always winter and never Christmas.”
It took the arrival of a small child, Lucy, coming through the Wardrobe, to break the spell and rejuvenate hope in the midst of the long Narnian winter.
The next day, Father Christmas’ arrival followed Lucy’s and the other children.
“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last.”
Father Christmas comes with practical gifts for everyone: a sewing machine for Mrs. Beaver, a repaired dam for Mr. Beaver and – tools, not toys, for the children: a sword, a bow and arrow and a flask of healing liquid, all given with the mandate, “Bear them well – the time to use them may be near at hand.” Then, pulling out delightful mugs of hot tea, Father Christmas concludes the gift giving ceremony.
Practical gifts and simple fare to celebrate – sounds like the typical celebration before the age of electronics. Two popular authors describe their childhood celebrations as pioneers.
In the Little Britches series, Ralph Moody tells of his parents going to town in the early 1900s to purchase supplies and a few special treats for Christmas after an extremely harsh year financially. They discover they can’t afford to buy an orange for everyone in the family. Back home Father assures his children that oranges make his mouth pinch up. Mother ignores him and proceeds to peel and divide the orange sections between the family member. The family spent the day reading books aloud, acting out Shakespeare’s plays, popping corn, playing games and eating orange slices. “And I did not see Father pinch up his mouth even once as he ate the orange,” Moody says.
In the pioneer life of the mid-1870s of the “Little House on the Prairie,” Laura Ingalls and her sister, Mary, reach inside their stockings to find identical tin cups, small cakes and sticks of candy. With some prompting, they dig deeper to the toe of each stocking to pull out one shiny penny.
“There never had been such a Christmas,” Laura says looking in wonder at her treasures. She sipped water from her very, own tin cup, licked the candy cane and nibbled the little cake. She had more than she had had the day before and that was enough.
In this year when the financial Grinch has slipped into our economy and begun to strip away the excess, take time to reflect on that first Christmas.
Christ arrived, not in a palace; not in a clean, climate controlled women’s hospital; not snug and warm in the family home – but in the dark, in a stranger’s barn – a long ways away from Mary and Joseph’s home. They laid God’s sacrificial gift of love in a feeding trough to be welcomed by a bunch of shepherds who had rushed from the fields wearing their dirty work cloths. They came with only their curiosity to find the child who would be the Savior whose arrival the angels had announced.
Never has there been such a Christmas as that one. Never since has such a gift been given. With God’s gift that night we can eternally have more than we ever had before – and that is enough for anyone, any day of the year.