A Child’s Christmas Perspective – December 12, 1999
Christmas is a joyous season, when our thoughts often turn to children. Their eyes sparkle as they see the colorful lights, smiles fill their faces as they see toys stacked to the ceiling in stores, and their hearts beat rapidly as they climb onto Santa’s lap to tell him what they want for Christmas. Loving parents yearn to give their children the gifts that will make their sugar-plum dreams come true, but, in the process, too often forget to give the best gifts of all.
What can we give our children that will be of greatest value? Sometimes it’s they who will give us the clues. A mother remembers a particular day when the family was eating dinner. She and her husband were at odds with each other, and there was tension in the air. Their little five-year-old daughter sensed it and began to quietly sing the words of a song she had learned in church: “There is beauty all around when there’s love at home.”1 She and her husband realized what they had been doing. They put their differences aside and hugged each other, and theirlittle daughter smiled. A feeling of peace filled their home. It’s been said that “[a child’s] mind, uncluttered by the tensions of responsibility, can reach directly into the heart of a problem and make it brilliantly clear.”2
This was verified again when another little child asked his parents as they scurried about trying to find the just-right gift for everyone, “What are we going to give to Jesus? It’s His birthday, isn’t it?” That’s when they began the tradition of giving a gift to Him by writing on a piece of paper something they would do that would please Him. One child wrote, “I am going to say my prayers every night.” Another wrote, “I am going to stop hitting my sister.” The mother wrote, “I am going to take the time to read scriptures to my children.”
Have you ever watched children as they approach a Nativity scene? Instinctively they are drawn to the Christ child lying in the manger and often will reach for Him. Perhaps the children, once again, have given us the most important clue of all, that is, to reach for the One whose birth we celebrate.
Program #3669
1. “Love at Home,” Hymns, no. 294.
2. Deborah Kerr, “Young Philosophers Speaking,” from Words to Live By (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 213.