CHAPTER 1
Good Receivers 1999
Tis the season of giving. And receiving. At Christmas we call it giving — rather than receiving — gifts, even though the transaction requires both. One doesn't happen without the other. It's like a game of catch, needing two people, one to throw and one to catch. But we don't call it a game of throw. By its name, we take the throwing for granted and place the greater burden on catching the ball. The success is in the receiving.
Giving gifts may be an important ritual of Christmas but I submit that more responsibility for a good Christmas gift exchange should fall on the receiver. Good receiving can be hard, particularly when it's a gift that challenges the limits of your appreciation, like a tie resembling all the others hanging in your closet. It's like a game of catch where not every throw hits you in the hands.
My brother was an honest, if not diplomatic, gift receiver. A distant aunt once sent him a dress shirt that he didn't care for. It was a nice shirt, but just too highfalutin for his Salvation Army tastes. When he told me he was impartial to the shirt, I remarked how much I liked it and he tossed it to me in a quick exchange of ownership.
"Here," he said. "It's yours."
Fulfilling his responsibility to send a thank-you note, he took the honest path and confessed to the aunt what he had done, pointing out the double benefit of his act. He wrote that Ted loved the shirt while he was touched by the thought behind the gift, something he was able to keep. Two gifts for the price of one. A gift that keeps on giving.
But in truth he got the better end of the deal. He received the genuine emotion from someone who cared for him, while all I got was the symbol of that emotion. The shirt wore out one day, but the emotion never did.
Sometimes it's hard to find the emotional intent. At those times it's a challenge to remember that the thought behind the gift should be honored, rather than the gift itself.
One of my favorite stories about Christmas receiving comes from a novel called Sometimes A Great Notion. It's not a book about Christmas, but rather the story of a bunch of roughneck Oregon loggers, the Stamper family, led by older brother Hank.
The Stampers were brawlers, attracted to fisticuffs and bloody noses. The exception was Hank's cousin Joe Ben, whose charitable and optimistic nature contrasted sharply with the combative approach to life of the rest of the family, and Hank in particular. Joe Ben was kind and generous and believed everyone else was too. He had grown up viewing the world as a simple place filled with people of good intentions. He smiled at everything. To Hank and the others, Joe Ben had a tinker toy mind. During the day, as he worked amidst the roar of chain saws and crashing timber, he sang to the music playing on a transistor radio that hung from his neck.
The Stampers were not rich, so there were never piles of presents under the Christmas tree. As loggers eking out a living in the woods, they didn't have any trouble getting a tree, but decorating it was not always easy. So, every year when they were young, the Stamper boys got presents that were limited to whatever their stockings could hold: candy and yo-yo's and marbles and such. But on Christmas morning every year Joe Ben cheerfully sifted through the spare contents of his stocking and expressed his gratitude that Santa Claus had once again included him in his rounds. He always saw good fortune in his gifts before anyone else did.
Joe Ben's unbridled glee irritated his cousins to the point that one year Hank decided to pull a nasty trick on him. As boys, they lived in the same house, and late on Christmas Eve, after Santa had come and gone, Hank snuck downstairs, careful not to awaken the others. He took Joe Ben's stocking down from the mantle and emptied it and filled it with horse manure. Giggling to himself, he re-hung the stocking and slipped back into bed.
In the morning the boys dashed to the fireplace. Joe Ben grabbed his stocking and peered inside. His eyes grew wide as saucers. Then he suddenly dropped the stocking and ran to the front door. Hank, holding back a chuckle, asked, "Joe, where you goin'? What did ol' Santa bring you?"
Joe Ben reached for a piece of rope hanging from a hook by the door and answered, "Brought me a bran' new pony, but he got away. I'll catch him if I hurry." And then he ran out the door.
If someone had showed Joe Ben there was no pony, only a bad joke, he would have thanked the giver of the fertilizer and started a vegetable garden. He may have been holding the gift of a bad intention, but it was still a gift — with an intention of some kind — and he couldn't help but look beyond it in search of some good emotion that accompanies any gift. He was thankful, a good receiver.
This year, let's be like Joe Ben and dream of ponies, but be thankful of fertilizer. Let's not overlook the emotions behind the gifts. As we all know, the best gifts, large or small, come from the heart. Let's remember what the gifts are: the symbols of something that connects us every year at this time. Let's be good Christmas receivers.
It's been said that the wise men started the tradition of Christmas giving with the gifts they brought to the manger. They placed frankincense and myrrh at Mary's feet and stepped back to admire the Christ child. But, really, who was giving and who was receiving that night? And for the past two thousand years, every Christmas we celebrate again receiving God's greatest gift. We try to be good receivers. We're given the same gift every Christmas and unwrap it with the same wonder, joy and thanks. Year after year it goes on. It's been like a good game of catch.
CHAPTER 2
Waiting for Christmas 2000
My grandmother had an expression that comes to mind this time of year. Anytime she thought I was moving too slowly and ordered me to speed up, I would always reply, "I'm coming", and then she got in the last word. "So is Christmas. You're as slow as Christmas."
These are words every child understands and knows to be true. Nothing is as slow as Christmas. Nothing approaches you slower than Christmas. The weeks leading up to Santa's arrival move imperceptibly with the speed of a glacier. For kids, the wait is agonizing, while grown-ups embrace the wait and even give it a name — advent — and celebrate it as a special event of its own. There is as much joy in knowing something wonderful is coming and having to wait for it as there is in actually experiencing it. We prefer a slow and sweet approach to Christmas but try explaining this to a child and he'll look at you like you have mistletoe sticking out your nose. Wait for...
