CHRISTMAS GIVING

Christmas is a time for giving and receiving gifts. The giving part originated with the three wise men who honoured the Christ child with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Of course, gift giving is also all about the mythology of Santa Claus and the story of Saint Nicholas. The Spanish translation for Saint Nicholas is San Nicolas which does sound a lot like Santa Claus. Born in Turkey in the third century, Nicholas was raised a devout Christian. His wealthy parents died when he was young and he used his inheritance to help the needy. As a bishop, Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity and love of children.

The legend of Santa Claus originates from the story of a poor man with three daughters. In those days, a young woman’s father had to offer a dowry to prospective husbands. Without a dowry, young girls were destined for a life of prostitution or slavery.

As the story goes, when the poor man’s first daughter became of age to marry, Nicholas secretly left a bag of gold on the man’s open window sill. He repeated this act of generosity when the second daughter came of age. The poor man wondered who was responsible for ‘saving’ his daughters. When the day arrived when his third daughter was eligible for mariage, the father took up a vantage point near the window so he could discover the identity of the surreptitious benefactor. He waited in watch all night but in the morning discovered another bag of gold beside the hearth. It had been tossed down the chimney by the wily bishop. In light of the story, hanging stockings by the fireside does make a lot of sense.

The best gifts that we can give are not the store bought ones. Rather, they’re the ones we create ourselves: the picture album we make for our parents, the mittens we knit for our grandchildren, the cookies we bake for our neighbor. What makes them so special is that they’re actually small pieces of ourselves.

In the same way, I realize that the ‘gift’ of my cancer this year is a tiny piece of God and an invitation from Him to share in His suffering as well as His light. It is a call to a deeper relationship with Him and to a richer understanding of Christmas as the celebration in the ultimate in gift giving… God’s gift of His only son Jesus.