Merry Christmas
For the children in our families, this is a very exciting time of the year because of the gifts they will receive. Most of us have taught our small children that the gifts come from Santa Claus and they only receive the gifts because they have been good. It does not take them long before they figure out that the gifts come from their parents and other members of the family and that Santa is just a made up character. I have never seen an instance where having children believing in Santa was a bad thing. There is a story about two young children talking about the devil. One said to the other that there was no such thing as the devil. It was just like Santa, it is your mother and daddy. When a child is mature enough to question the existence of Santa, we should tell them the truth and that he is an imaginary character.
Children need to learn as early as possible the true story of Christmas and why we celebrate it and exchange gifts. I remember that I was very small when I memorized the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible, in the book of Luke in the second chapter beginning with the eighth verse. I can still quote that story from the King James Version of the Bible and I usually quote it at least one time to somebody each year during the Christmas season. Memorizing these verses did not come from my church or my family at home. I, along with the rest of my class, learned these verses in public school. Our school had students from several Protestant church denominations and none of the parents complained about the children memorizing Bible verses.
It thrills me that we have a president that is a believer in God and trusts the Bible promises in his life. Our vice president is an active Christian who has a high moral standard lived in mill villages until I was 12 years old. We never had any extra money. I earned the money to pay for two bicycles that I had in my life. My second bicycle was new when I bought it and I was the only of the four brothers that ever had a new bicycle. I had two older brothers and a younger brother born on my ninth birthday. When Christmas came, we would receive one simple gift like a pair of roller skates. Most of the churches gave a treat bag on the Sunday morning nearest Christmas. It could contain one or two big red apples, a couple of oranges, a couple of tangerines, some hard candy, a box of raisins and some pecans, English walnuts and Brazil nuts. This would be the only time during the year that we had these kinds of fruits and nuts to eat. In our back yard, we had plums, small apples, peaches and grapes. Daddy also had about three bee hives that supplied us with honey. These were our normal fruits and sweet things.
While I was living in Saudi Arabia, they tried to make us work a full day on Christmas Day. We all came in at the normal time in the morning but all of the Americans and Europeans left for lunch and did not return until the next day. We celebrated Christmas inside of our compounds by going from house to house and having coffee, hot tea, hot apple cider and sweet treats. We visited with folks we did not talk to most of the year. Everybody was always friendly but we all had different schedules and did not see each other very often.
Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas are three special seasons for those of us who are Christians. It is disappointing to see how all of these have become commercialized but as I have become older; I understand it and I know that I cannot change it.