Once upon a time,
there was a man
who worked very hard
just to keep food
on the table
for his family.
This particular year
And
a few days before Christmas,
he scolded
his little five-year-old daughter.
Because he had found out
that she had used up
the family’s only roll
of expensive gold wrapping paper.
As money was tight,
he became even more upset
when
on Christmas Eve
he saw that the child
had used all that paper
to decorate just one shoebox
she had put under the Christmas tree.
He also was concerned
about where
she had got hold of the money
to buy what was in
the box.
Nevertheless, the next morning
the little girl,
filled with excitement,
brought the gift box
to her father and said,
“This is for you, Daddy!”
As he opened the box,
the father was embarrassed
by his earlier overreaction,
now regretting
how he had been angry
with her.
But when he opened the shoebox,
he found it was empty
and again his anger flared.
“Don’t you know, young lady,”
he said harshly,
“when you give someone a present,
there’s supposed to be
something inside the package!”
The little girl looked up at him
with sad tears
rolling from her eyes
and whispered:
“Daddy, it’s not empty.
I blew kisses into it
until it was all full.”
The father was crushed.
He fell on his knees
and put his arms
around his precious little girl.
He begged her to forgive him
for his unnecessary temper.
An accident
took the life of the child
only a short time later.
It is told that the father
then kept this little gold box
by his bed
for all the years of his life.
Whenever he was discouraged
or faced difficult problems,
he would open the box,
take out an imaginary kiss,
and remember the love
of this beautiful child
who had put it there.
That is both and sad
and uplifting story.
Yet for all of us
who have reached
a certain age,
we know life
to be both bitter and sweet.
But despite that
we still try
to candy coat Christmas.
We spend too much,
eat too much
and become couch potatoes
too much.
And then…
and then it’s all over.
That is the moment
we feel like that father
who opened
that apparently empty shoebox.
It’s at that moment,
we exclaim –
is that it!
It is that moment,
we feel a bit cheated.
However, that feeling
forgets that Christmas
is like that
beautifully wrapped present
the little girl
gave her father.
For the true content
of Christmas is invisible.
It is the invisible idea
that there is a Creator God
who came down to earth
not as a thunderbolt
but a baby risking human hands.
The idea
that he did this
for no other reason
that his concern
for each and everyone of us.
The idea
that we can respond
to this unseen present
by showing concern,
companionship and even love others.
Since who can doubt
that Christmas
does make the world
a better place.
For don’t we greet
total strangers
on the 25th
with a smile
and a ‘Merry Christmas’?
Don’t we give generously
to charities
for human beings
in trouble, far and near?
Don’t we revel,
if only for a day,
in a peace
that seems beyond understanding
but not out knowing?
And the answer are – Yes we do!
The Australian columnist
Clive James
once wrote
of visiting Paris
and reading
the author Albert Camus.
For he said –
I wanted to write like that,
in a prose that sang like poetry.
I wanted to look like him.
I wanted to wear
a Bogart-style trench coat
with the collar turned up,
have an untipped Gauloise
dangling from my lower lip,
and die
romantically
in a car crash.
He then decided
quite wisely
to keep the crash
for a more propitious moment.
However, he then wrote –
when you leave Paris,
you also leave behind
the person
you might have been.
Let us then
not leave Christmas behind.
Let us not leave Christmas
like a discarded empty box.
Let us see more
than its golden wrapper.
Let us not leave
the person Christmas
could make us.
Instead let us
open and open again
the gift of Christmas.
And then blow
its kisses of love
towards people
who need their presence
more than most.
Amen