TAKE TIME TO SAVOR CHRISTMAS OLD AND NEW

There is glitter in the carpet, angels on the clock shelf, camels coming down the stairs. Christmas! Say it slowly, Christ-mas. Doesn't it sound like a sweet caress? Stop often in the middle of cookie baking, tree trimming, card writing or shopping and whisper to yourself, "Christmas." It quiets the anxious heart.

One of my favorite things to do while engaged in the above mentioned activities is to zero in on old remembered Christmases. There was the Christmas when Mama moved the Christmas tree and creche into the kitchen so they would be closer to our every day living and the Baby Jesus in the creche would stay warm. The parlor fires went out in the night, but the kitchen, with a banked fire in the fireplace and two other stoves, was always warm. But I've told that story many times. Let me remember this old Christmas Past.

It was the Christmas program at our school. Being small, I was seated up front, near the improvised stage, so I could see better. Curtains made of sheets were suddenly pulled back and there were Mary and Joseph seated on straw, hovering over a big wooden box also filled with straw and in the box was a large life-sized doll. Wise Men and shepherds were stationed about, and up high, over the backdrop of another curtain was part of an angel. Only the head, wing tips and tinseled halo showed. I though it only another very large doll.

Everything was so motionless there was an unreality about it. It was the first nativity tableau I had ever seen, but I knew the Christmas story. All during the soft singing of Silent Night and O, Little Town of Bethlehem, not one person in the tableau moved. The curtains started to close, very slowly. Just as they were nearly together I looked up at the angel which I thought to be a dressed-up doll and the angel smiled at me~!

I tugged at Mama's sleeve and whispered, "Mama, the angel smiled at me." "Yes, dear, I saw her," Mama replied. She didn't add that it was one of the young McFarland girls and I've been ever so glad that she didn't. It was such a good feeling to think that an angel had smiled at me. It lasted for a long time.

Perhaps your long thoughts might be about the peace proclaimed by the herald angels and you look about distractedly for that peace. Did they mean peace between nations. Cessation of war? If so, where is such peace? Then, like a sudden shaft of light, it might come to you that the peace about which the angels sang so gloriously there in the Judean sheep pasture was the peace associated with man's individual relationship with God.

Perhaps your thoughts will include an imaginary trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, over the rocky hills, across wadies, past goat's hair tents. There will be other people along the way with whom you may share a campfire supper and talk about Caesar's new enrollment for taxation and how in the world you are going to be able to survive any more taxes. Whoever the traveling strangers are, they will be of distant kin and hours might be spent trying to trace the family connections. In Bethlehem you will feel the jostle of the crowd, experience the difficulty of finding suitable quarters. On a certain morning you will hear a strange tale some shepherds are telling around town. You may shrug it off and go away and will have had just another signing up for taxes, or you may look into this strange happening for yourself and see what has come to pass.

Coming out of your reverie you may think, ah, yes, what did come to pass? Christmas. Christmas. Say it slowly Christ-mas!

REJOICE!