The Eagle Magazine
I Remember That Christmas
Do you remember many of your childhood Christmases? I do….my father loved Christmas more than anyone else in the family. He really worked hard to make sure we all, two sisters, me and a brother, had the best Christmas ever. When we woke up on Christmas morning there were presents everywhere around the tree. It seemed like one of us got a bicycle every year till I was a teenager. We got BB guns, peddle jeeps, cowboy hats, Lincoln Logs, games, Give A Show Projector, one year my sister even got a desk. You name it, if they sold it for kids in the 50’s and 60’s one of us got it at Christmas.
We also got big Christmas Stockings filled with fruit, nuts, candy and at least one small gift like gloves, hats and rings and necklaces for the girls, pocket knives and tool kits for the boys. You better know it, Christmas at our house was super special. We decorated big too. Always the biggest tree Dad could get in the house, with those huge colorful lights that had clips for the branches. Icicles, you know those long thin aluminum strips, and canned snow sprayed on the windows. I can still smell that stuff, that's the smell of Christmas to me.
I remember one Christmas in particular. I was seven and my sister was four and she slept in my room that night. Twin beds with a night stand and an alarm clock between them. Mom put us to bed around nine o’clock, what a joke! We laid awake and talked until about 11:00, then Mom came in and turned off the light and said “that’s enough out of you two, go to sleep or Santa Clause will never come.” Well we tried. We closed our eyes as tight as we could and waited for what seemed like at least an hour, then Cindy said, “what time is it now, midnight?” I thought it must be at least midnight, so I looked at the clock and said….”it’s only five after 11:00!” I couldn’t believe it, how could time go so slow, the clock must be wrong, but it was ticking, yepper, those clocks you had to wind and they ticked so loud you could hear 'em in the next room.
Well, let me tell ya, we checked that clock ever three to five minutes till way after midnight and then, somewhere between 1963 and eternity, we dropped off to sleep. There is no doubt in my mind that Christmas Eve was a week long, maybe a month.
Has time ever stood still for you? I guess it has for all of us at one time or another.
I remember another Christmas Eve in Cardiff, Wales. My daughter was about six years old and she got a play house kitchen that year. It came in a flat box with about six thousand screws. It was before the days of cordless drills and power screwdrivers. So me and that phillips head screw driver worked and worked in that tiny little living room until that kitchen was complete. Then I drug myself upstairs and lay down to sleep. I had no sooner closed my eyes till Rebekah was tugging on my arm and saying, Daddy, it’s Christmas morning. As I tried to open my eyes I thought, NO WAY, it hasn’t even been five minutes. I know that was the shortest night the world has ever known.
You see, it’s really just a matter of perspective. The longest night or the shortest is just in the mind of the individual. So think of this.
“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” II Peter 3:8
If you wonder if Jesus is ever coming, if you think God is so very slow in answering your prayer, if you have come to believe that some things will just never come to pass, remember, it’s just a matter of perspective. God’s timing is perfect and even though we are looking through the glass darkly, one day we will see him face to face. Don’t lose heart, God knows you're waiting and He will answer in His perfect timing.
I trust that in whatever stage of life your in, this Christmas will be wonderfully blessed and you will have a tremendous New Year.
