Saints and Sinners: The real reason for Christmas

People often speak of the magic of Christmas. This celebration of Christ’s birth is a beautiful holiday filled with family traditions, joyful music, warmth, love and sharing. But it raises some issues, too — like what do you tell your children when they ask you why Santa Claus always leaves more presents at the Smiths’ house than at your house?

I went to a Christmas party at church the other night when everybody had to tell how they observed the Yuletide at their house.

One woman told us that her family was relatively poor when she was a child. That could have created a serious problem at Christmastime for how to tell a youngster that just because his parents don’t have much money Santa Claus won’t leave many presents?

That wouldn’t make much sense to a child. What difference could it make to Santa that you are poor? Actually, in that case, he would leave poor children more — not less — than he left the others.

“My parents figured out an ingenious answer to that dilemma,” the woman said.

“They told us that Santa Claus filled only the Christmas stockings by the chimney on Christmas Eve. The other gifts, we were told, came from parents or relatives or friends.

“It was a good solution to the problem,” she said, “for poor as my family was, they were still able to fill our Christmas stockings to overflowing. The kids in the next block might get more presents than we would but it was because their parents had more money. Santa Claus, though, didn’t do any better by them than he did by us. And for kids that was the important thing.

As exciting as the idea of Santa’s visit might be, children should be made aware of the real reason for the season, and why there are gifts at all for Christmas.

One of my favorite holiday tales involves two small street urchins on one Christmas Eve.

They had stopped to admire a bright, new, shiny sports car parked at the curb.

While they were standing there a young man came by and was about to get into the car when the older of the two little boys spoke up.

“Is this your car, mister?” he asked.

The young man nodded. “My brother gave it to me for Christmas.”

The boy looked astonished. “You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn’t cost ya nothin’? Gosh, I wish I –“

He hesitated. The young man knew what the boy was going to wish. He was going to wish he had a brother like that.

But the young man was wrong.

“I wish,” the boy went on, “that I could be a brother like that!”

Then he looked lovingly and somewhat sadly at the smaller boy who used a crutch.

“C’mon Bobby,” he said, “we’d better get home. Mom will be waiting for us.”

In that little story is the true spirit of Christmas.

Thank God we “have a brother like that” who came to Earth at Christmas to give us the one gift most worth having — the everlasting gift of God’s love so that forevermore we shall know that “when we plod on leaden feet and sigh for wings and no star shines,” above the encircling gloom and around it shines the light of God’s love in the face of Christ. And we shall know that love is at the heart of all good things.

But that is only part of the Christmas story. God’s great gift of Christ was intended to “set all the world to giving.”

Our wish for ourselves on Christmas should be that we can be a brother or sister like that “to those in our lives who look to us to give them the greatest of all human gifts — a hand to hold and a look that says, “I love you and I think you’re wonderful.”

George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.