What Shall We Give The Children?
About this time, in many homes, in some even earlier, the ritual of making
Christmas gift lists begins. I mean the kind of list of what we want for Christmas.
We do it at our house. Everyone is expected to post or in some way publicize
a list of "wants and wishes" so that the other gift givers will have
some ideas about what to shop for.
It is an interesting exercise. It requires considerations that are varied.
One knows not to put on her list something that is outrageously expensive and
impossible for anyone to afford. Wishes must be within possibility of being available.
If sizes are in order then they must be known. Sometimes, we even specify brand,
color and retailer who sells it. Some times our lists include intangible matters
like a new attitude or a planned event or special help with a project that requires
assistance.
There is a psychological and emotional challenge to it all. It requires
making oneself a bit vulnerable and in some sense we declare our neediness. There
is always the possibility that we will not get what we want.
One year my wife posted a very skimpy list. She didn't seem to want anything.
That irritated me because I was hard up for ideas so I said something like, "Come
on and get with the season, don't be so depressed." Well, that triggered
her annoyance and within a few minutes she slammed a magnet against the refrigerator
door affixing a list that contained about ten items among which were, "a
new Lincoln Continental, a fox fur coat, two weeks in Hawaii and a diamond bracelet." It
was a memorable and edifying encounter.
What I want to emphasize today, is not what we want to give our children,
or what I want them to get for Christmas. I want to emphasize what we want our
children to receive from Christmas, from the experience of the celebration. I
want to describe the religious, personal and theological realities which are
the gifts that cannot be bought. I will say, “I” but I'm not talking
about
“we,” and in that regard, I want to emphasize that there's no such
thing as a single parent. Every person on earth has two parents. You all do know
that, that's just kind of one of the fundamental facts of life. Now granted,
there are parents who are deceased, departed, absent, and divorced, and ways
in which parents may not be present. But we all have two parents. Very often
an absent parent, or a deceased parent can have more influence and power over
a person's life, than one who is present. I just say that somewhat incidentally
to emphasize that we all have two parents.
The thinking expressed here is generally shared by my wife, but I will
simply say "I" because I am speaking my mind. This is what I want our
children to receive from Christmas, and most emphatically and perhaps more importantly,
it is what I would hope all children would receive from Christmas.
I want to describe twelve gifts. We all know that little carol, "The
Twelve Days of Christmas." You know, "on the first day of Christmas
my true love gave to me," and then that incredibly useless array of gifts
that my true love gives to me,… four maids a milking, ten kings a pumping," or
whatever they are. The reason for that is that there are twelve days in Christmastide.
Christmas begins Christmas day, and continues until the first day of Epiphany,
January the 6th. Traditionally in old England you gave your loved ones a gift
on each day of Christmastide. Here are the twelve gifts I would cherish our children
receive from Christmas.
First of all I would want our children to know that I know that I do not
own them. They do not belong to me. Our children belong fundamentally, and ultimately
to God. We are the stewards of their life, their nurture, and their education
and protection but we do not own them. I hope my children know that I know that
I do not own them. We live together by choice. We share together out of desire
and satisfaction.
The second gift I would want our children to receive
from Christmas is to know that I give them my love, but I cannot give them my
thoughts and my feelings, for they have their own thoughts, and their own feelings.
They need an atmosphere in which in freedom and acceptance, their own feelings
and thoughts may be nurtured, honored and expressed. Everyone has a right to
their own feelings and thoughts.
The third gift I want them to receive from Christmas is, I want to give
our children a relationship in which there is a fair and happy exchange of yesterday
and tomorrow. For I own more of yesterday than they do, and they own more of
tomorrow than I. If we can move gently between the two, we can avoid the cynicism
and the bitterness that prompts angry outbursts like, "don't tell me anymore
about the 'good ole days,"' and I should not say,
"oh, I'm so fearful of the future." For each day, each of us gives
up a piece of tomorrow, and life never waits for yesterday to return.
The fourth gift I would want our children to receive from Christmas, is
love connected to courage. For they will navigate strange seas and cross unimagined
boundaries, and they will glimpse new horizons which I have never seen, They
will need large doses of courageous love. As with all these gifts, you cannot
buy love and courage from Sears, or Spiegel, or Saks. Love without courage is
wimpy. Courage without love is often brutal.
The fifth gift I would want them to receive from Christmas is a large dose
of positive self esteem. Self esteem that gives them a great sense of self‑worth.
I want them to live life with the conviction that they are of inestimable value,
that there is no one more important than they are, and no one less important
than they are. I want them to have self‑reliance, born of self‑worth
and to extend for others the same gift.
The sixth gift I want our children to have is a sense of humor. For laughter
and festivity leavens life, and it mutes the awful anxiety there is in self‑aggrandizement.
Humor gives us fortitude against being buffeted about like balloons in the wind
and most of the time when we feel life is buffeting us about, it is because our
egos are over‑inflated like balloons. A sense of humor is the best way
to deflate an over‑inflated ego. Now I don't want our children to be good
at telling jokes, necessarily, but I want them to be able to laugh at their own
dangerous pride. I want them to cherish the close kinship of humor with faith.
For humor delights in life's contradictions and faith is inspired by life's paradoxes.
The seventh gift I would want for our children from Christmas is that I
want them to expect and appreciate discipline. For life itself is disciplined
and it is disciplining in all its limits, and all its fences. Now this is not
an unquestioning or unresisting surrender to every boundary there is in life,
and every stop sign. Sometimes we must fight against, and kick against life's
boundaries until we know what the limits are that are just and fair.
The eighth gift is that I want our children to appreciate the gift of good
work. For the lasting joy of having done work well, and earnestly, and effectively,
is to have the inestimable asset of being known as a good, capable, loyal, and
efficient worker. When they become that kind of worker, they will never be poor
and seldom bored.
The ninth gift I want for our children is to see their mother and father
make love. Now I don't mean boudoir frolics. I strive for them to see us as lovers
who are constantly making ourselves vulnerable to each other. Sharing humor,
small talk, minor affections, the light touch, deep eye contact, caring for each
other in a way in which we are concerned to be around the house, endeavoring
to enliven and quicken the other’s response. Since we have the situation
of only daughters, I hope that our daughters have been able to see a little bit
of what it's like to have a man around the house who cares. For those of you
mothers who have sons, the same wish prevails.
Gift number ten, I want our children to know what
is a fair judge. Children expect sternness. I think that children even want sternness
at times. But what children cannot tolerate is unfairness. It is not work, or
discipline that triggers anger, it is injustice. When we hear our children say, "It
isn't fair" then we better listen.
The eleventh gift is that I want our children to experience my open delight
in who they are as people. I want to speak their praises. I want to look at them
with wide‑eyed wonder, for I shall never see the likes of them again. They
are not like anyone else including their parents. It is only parental egotism
that prompts us to say, "oh isn't he just like his daddy" I want to
be their priest, in that I want to lift them up and offer them, and I want them
to know that they are held lightly and lovingly by their mother and their father,
and beheld with simple astonishment, and gratitude.
The last gift of Christmas, but it is really
“The First,” but I simply decided to hold it to the end. I want our
children to get from Christmas a personal experience of our savior Jesus Christ.
Now some of you may be thinking, "well of course that's what he wants, that's
his business. If he worked for an auto maker, he'd want a new Camaro, Mustang,
or Daytona for his kids." Not so—I'd want this no matter what my vocational
calling. For to know Jesus Christ as my personal savior, is to receive these
previous eleven gifts.
To have a saving experience with Jesus the Christ is to have: knowledge
of belonging to God and being loved, an accepted yesterday and open tomorrow,
love and courage for living life, high‑esteem, humor that loves humility,
an appreciation for human limits and fights, a love of justice, human demonstrations
of lovingness, fair judgments and gratitude for one's unique life.
So, the first and last of all the gifts of Christmas is a meeting with
the Christ. All these gifts flow from that. That's what I want our children to
receive from Christmas. These gifts are a hope, a dream, a goal and with all
of us, to some extent, an achievement. But the quest drives and lures us all
our lives. All our gift giving and receiving is a symbol of this greater wish
which is given to us by the free and loving hand of God. May it be the light
and longing of the length of our days—for all our days.
Merry Christmas!
Rev. DeForrest Wiksten THE PROTESTANT HOUR
