Christmas Response

  “SELFISHNESS makes Christmas a burden; love makes it a delight,” someone said.

  
One Christmas when I was near seven years old, I found selfishness in my heart.

My family attended a small, rural Pentecostal church north of Greer, South Carolina in the mid-1950s. Our young pastor announced that the church would give a bag of fruit and nuts to each family attending a special Sunday night Christmas service.                                                          

On the night of that service, we saw the bulging grocery bags beneath the tall Christmas tree in our sanctuary. As I recall, we enjoyed carols and a Christmas play before the evening’s last event, the giving of the fruit. The pastor handed a bag to each family representative who came forward.

In a pew near the back of the church sat a family I had never seen before. They were obviously poor. There was a mother with—as I remember—three children and a husband who seemed shy and backward. It was the thin, haggard mother who timidly came forward to receive a bag of fruit.

I remember thinking, “They don’t go to our church. They just came to get the fruit.”

As that thought echoed in my mind, I sensed I was wrong in my attitude of heart—even if I was right about the visiting family. As our young pastor smiled and handed a bag of fruit to the mother, I watched the pastor’s eyes, and in his eyes I saw no hesitancy, no judgment, no burden—only delight.