Christmas Doesn’t Come From a Store
PURPOSE
The help family members understand that the peace and power of Christmas come from giving of ourselves
MATERIALS
Story, “A Christmas Dad Would Have Wanted” (below)
Story, I Felt Like An Angel
SONG SUGGESTION
Hymn #201, Joy to the World LESSON IDEAS
1.
Share the following excerpt from “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” by Dr. Seuss:
Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit, He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it! “Pooh-Pooh to the Whos!” he was grinch-ish-ly humming. “They’re finding out now that no Christmas is coming! “They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do! “Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
“Then the Whos down in Who-ville will all cry Boo-Hoo! “That’s a noise, “grinned the Grinch, “That I simply MUST hear!” So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow ... But the sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded merry! It couldn’t be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY! He stared down at Who-ville! The Grinch popped his eyes! Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise! Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small, Was singing! Without any presents at all! He HADN‘T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same! And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags! “It came without packages, boxes or bags!” And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! “Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas ... perhaps ... means a little bit more!”
(Dr. Suess, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, New York: Random House, 1957.)
2. Ask, “If the true spirit of Christmas doesn’t come from a store, where can we find it?”
a. Invite your family to listen to the following true story and see if they can determine how these people found peace and happiness at Christmas.
i. “A Christmas Dad Would Have Wanted” (below) ii. Story, I Felt Like An Angel below
3. Help your family understand that the true spirit of Christmas is found in giving of ourselves. Our Heavenly Father gave of Himself by sending us His Son. Jesus gave of Himself by living and dying for us. a. You may wish to share the following quote by President Ezra Taft
Benson: “If you would find yourself, learn to deny yourself for the blessing of others. Forget yourself and find someone who needs your service, and you will discover the secret to the happy, fulfilled life” (Ensign, May 1979, p. 34).
ACTIVITY IDEAS
Discuss as a family things you can do to enjoy the true spirit of Christmas: a. Make treats as a family and deliver them to someone in your
neighborhood or ward who is lonely. b. Invite someone needy or lonely to have dinner with your family. c. Contact the bishop to see if there is a needy family in the ward. Ask your
family if they would be willing to sacrifice some of their Christmas money to buy gifts for the needy family.
Images courtesy of InspireGraphics.com
A CHRISTMAS DAD WOULD HAVE WANTED
By Stanley A. Petersen
When I was eleven years of age, just before Christmas, my father passed away. I was very, very close to my father. He was a very special man to me. I worshiped him. He could do no wrong in my eyes. I used to live for the summers to come. He traveled on the highway. He was a salesman for a plumbing supply company and would travel all over northern California. I used to just live for the summers so that I could just spend the time traveling with my dad. We were close friends, as well as father and son. When he died, part of me died.
I just couldn’t imagine Christmas would even come without dad. It was a very difficult thing because of the five children. I was the youngest of five. Ever since I could remember my dad carried a pocket watch in his vest pocket. It was one he had had since he was a young man, unmarried. So for many, many months we saved, schemed, planned and anticipated this glorious Christmas for we had bought my father a wristwatch that would never be seen, because he was gone. We had it engraved on the back, “To our loving father, Joe.” I dreaded Christmas. I didn’t want it to come. I didn’t want to remember the watch. I didn’t want to remember that my dad was not here to see it.
Christmas Eve came--five o’clock in the evening. It was a somber evening. There was a sad atmosphere in our home. At five o’clock a miracle happened. There was a knock at the front door. I went to the door. There was a little boy about my age, about eleven. He had in his hand several waxed paper bags. In the waxed paper bags he had fudge--little packages of fudge. He said, “I’m selling Christmas candy, would you buy some?”
I went to my mother and said, “There is a little boy outside, who is very, very poor who is selling candy. Can we buy some? It’s 25 cents a bag.”
She told me we should buy some and gave me a dollar bill and told me to tell him to keep the change. I brought the candy in the house--half a dozen pieces of sugary fudge of very poor quality. We opened it and my mother looked in. After a few moments she said, “Stan, go get him and bring him back.”
So I went outside and down the street. He had been down two or three more houses and hadn’t sold any more candy. I told him to come back, that my mother wanted to see him. He was frightened. He probably thought we had seen the quality of the candy and wanted our money back. Finally I convinced him to come back, that my mother wanted to talk to him and that she didn’t want to hurt him. Finally, reassuringly, I got him back to our home.
My mother asked him a little bit about his family--where they were and where they lived. The little boy was very vague about some of the details and said they had just moved from Oklahoma to Sacramento. We lived in Sacramento, California. He said they had moved here and they didn’t have an apartment yet, but were looking for a place.
In the course of the conversation, my mother finally won his confidence and asked him where his mother and father were. He said, “My mother is with my brothers and sisters--they’re selling candy also.” She got him to promise that he would bring his mother back to our house. Well, about an hour later he came back with his mother and his family--all but the father and the oldest daughter.
In the course of a rather lengthy conversation, my mother pulled out of this woman the real story. They had moved from Oklahoma, her husband thought he had a job in Sacramento at the air base just 12 miles out of Sacramento. When they got here they found out they did not have a job. On the way out, the father had contracted a very bad cold and now was extremely ill. They had run out of money. They had no place to stay and they were living out under a bridge on the American River. They had a very old car that they had come from Oklahoma in and they were living in the car with the five children, the mother and the father, with the father being extremely ill.
It’s cold in Sacramento. It’s not like Los Angeles. It’s a damp area and damp coldness and so I am sure they were really very uncomfortable and miserable under that little bridge. They were living on some rotten potatoes that they had gotten out of a garbage can somewhere at a grocery store. That’s all they had. They took the last little bit of money they had to buy a little sugar and a little cocoa. Over an open fire they had made this little batch of fudge and were trying to sell it to get some money so they could have some food.
My mother talked to the mother and finally convinced her that we wanted to help them. She got the mother to promise that the first thing the next morning they would come back and that we would provide Christmas. She called all the children together. And what was almost planned, I think it was planned, those children almost matched the ages and sizes of each of us--even the sex--boy, girl relation. We began to hurry around to prepare Christmas for this family, taking coats we had and wrapping them, taking Christmas presents we had bought for one another and putting their names on instead. We rushed to the store and bought several boxes of food. All evening, late into the night we were busily engaged in getting ready Christmas morning for this family.
Early Christmas morning they came. The glorious time had arrived to provide for this ragged little family that had absolutely nothing. The father came, as ill as he was, he came. He had nowhere else to go and it was the only warmth they had. We spent Christmas day enjoying that day with them, feeding them, watching them unwrap their presents.
As the day wore on and evening came, my mother, after we had loaded their car with boxes full of groceries, toys, blankets and all the things they needed, my mother put $100 in that mother’s hand. We got $800 insurance money when my father died and we had about $300 left. The $100 was enough money to pay rent on an apartment or someplace where they could stay and to get a doctor. That was a lot of money for us and a lot of money for them. As that family left the mother had tears streaming down her cheeks, the father was so emotional he could not speak, and the children were absolutely elated.
We, after they left, savored the warmth and the beauty of that good Christmas day, December 25, 1941. We then began to reflect what the miracle was and what a marvelous experience it had been for us to have had that grateful thing come into our lives that Christmas. For we had been so busy and so involved in losing our lives in the service of somebody else that we had found happiness, fulfillment and a peace as much as we had ever known (from a talk given to Church Educational System employees. Used by permission).
I felt like an Angel
… when I realized what we had done.
Although the afternoon was crisp and cold, inside our house we were warm and snug. In my parents’ room, my three sisters and I were all busily wrapping presents for the Fitzpatricks.* Ever since my early childhood we’d been friends with the Fitzpatricks, and I was always painfully aware of how little the parents and their four children had.
With the gifts in a pile, my sisters and I formed an assembly line wrapping a present and taking it to my mother. After checking the contents of the package, she would decide who would get what, and then sign it “Santa.” She would deposit the gift in a large plastic bag, and we would go to the next one. Using this method we quickly and efficiently finished wrapping the presents in about an hour.
Later that night we all piled into the family van with those plastic bags and headed toward the trailer park where the Fitzpatricks lived. After parking the van, my dad got out, walked to the trailer, and waited at the door. When he was sure no one was home, he unloaded the bags and left them on the porch.
The following Sunday I sat with my family in sacrament meeting. Sitting still and trying to listen was not something I did readily, and soon I became mesmerized by the pictures I was drawing. At one point I glanced up to see Sister Fitzpatrick at the pulpit. But I was only vaguely aware of what she was saying. Suddenly my sister Audrey jabbed me with her elbow and whispered that she was talking about us.
Streaming down her face were tears, and her voice shook as she spoke. She told the congregation how they didn’t have money for Christmas and they weren’t sure what to do. Upon returning that night, they found the bags of presents on their porch. She warmly thanked the gift givers.
The Fitzpatricks never found out who left the Christmas presents for them, although from the pulpit Sister Fitzpatrick said she knew the gifts came from someone in the congregation. Amazingly, tears came to my eyes, and I had to look down to brush them away. That was when I first felt like an angel.
