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Editorial We extend happy thoughts of the holidays to our readers this year, with a little story about where we found Christmas one year, a long time ago. It was amidst all the craziness of the season that so many young families find themselves, stressed because all we had accomplished was still not enough, and the days were growing short. There were presents to buy and packages to mail, cookies to be baked and decorations to be put up. Where were we ever going to get the time and money to meet all of these demands? One night, after putting the children to bed early, we decided to abandon the hope of buying a new Christmas tree and put up the one we had for years. It was missing some key branches and tilted slightly to the right, but we figured we could save some time and money and get one more year out of the wretched tree. We put it in the corner, tied a string at the top and attached it to the wall to straighten it. We decided to let it settle a day before engaging the children in the family tradition of decorating the tree. We took one last look at it, sighed in the hope it would look better in the morning, shut the lights and, now exhausted, went to bed. The alarm rang the next morning and it was up and about getting the children off to school. I scurried to their bedrooms, awoke them and went into the kitchen to start breakfast. When the silence in the hallway leading to the bedrooms made it clear another wake up call was in order, I marched down and gave the second command to get up for school. As I turned to go back into the kitchen, my eyes found the tree. Beneath that bedraggled artificial pine were five little packages that had been carefully placed there. They were held together with more tape than wrapping and sat alone in anticipation of Christmas morning. On each package was a tag with my youngest son’s name on it. He had apparently gotten up during the night, saw the tree, and ignoring each of its gross imperfections, placed his presents beneath it. He had purchased them for us and his sisters and brothers at the Secret Santa Shop at school, brought them home, wrapped them and hidden them in his closet until just the right time. How wonderful the vision of childhood that sees beauty where others see only worn and weary. How touching the joy a child finds in giving to others.
Somewhere between those moments and adulthood, we lose those gifts. Maybe this year we should look for them again and find Christmas through the eyes of a child in the poor and lonely, the elderly, the sick; in our churches and in our homes, and even in five rumpled packages sitting beneath an old pine tree patiently waiting for December 25th.
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