Day 25 - The 25 Days of Christmas

The Gift of Love

      In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not...He came to what which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

                       (John 1:1-5, 11-14 (NIV))

The Gift I Gave Away

     I was hurrying home from church on Christmas Eve when I heard the singing.  Ethereal and uncanny, it stopped me still in the snow - for the singing was coming from the porch of Gussie's ramshackle house.

     The snow softened the harshness of the "brick bottom" area in Boston where I lived.  Here you had to be brick hard to exist.  And that usually meant fighting Gussie, my enemy.

     My stomach would tighten every time I'd approach his house.  Usually he'd come at me, fists ready.

     But that night Gussie was standing out there by himself singing Christmas carols.  The house was dark.  His mother had long since headed for the Charlestown saloons.

     His thin voice sounded so pitiful.  I found myself drawn to him.

     "Whadyawant?" he demanded.

     "How...how about coming home with me?"

     "Naah. 'Drather stay here."

     "What's the matter - you afraid?"

     "Who says I'm afraid!"  Soon we were throwing snowballs at each other as we made our way home.  Mother welcomed us.

     Our house was warm with laughter and pungent smells.  After dinner it was time for an exchange of gifts.  Gussie hung in the background.

     Then a voice boomed, "Well, here's my little matey!"  I looked up to see my Uncle John, a deck officer on one of the Boston ships.  "Look what I brought you." he roared, holding out a real seaman's pea jacket.

     My heart leaped.  Seafaring men were heroes to Boston boys.

     I put it on; then saw Gussie watching.  Written on his face was hunger for all the things he could never attain, a home where laughter flowed, a father.  He didn't even have an uncle.

     I turned to my uncle. "Uh, it's great, Uncle John.  But it's a little big."  I hunched my shoulders and my hands disappeared.

     He laughed. "Maybe your dad can wear it."

     "Well," I ventured, "how about my friend Gussie here?"

     Uncle John was perceptive.  "Say, mate," he called, "are you man enough to wear this pea jacket?"

     Gussie about leaped across the room.  As he put it on, I could see him literally growing into it.

     Later, when mom was snuffing out the tree candles, I said goodbye to Gussie and watched him walk out into the snow.  Soon after, he and his mother moved away.

     Years passed.  In 1942, a week before Christmas, I was hurrying down 42nd Street in New York City one night.  Suddenly a tall uniformed figure walking ahead of me caught my eye.  It was Gussie, wearing the gold braid of a merchant marine senior officer.  I hailed him.

     He had only an hour before his ship sailed so we ducked into a restaurant for a cup of coffee.  I learned that his mother had died after they moved.  "But," he said quietly, "by then I knew what I wanted to do with my life."

     Our time went by too quickly.  As we put on our coats I said, "You look great in that uniform, Gussie."

     "Well," he said, smiling, a far-away look in his eyes, "it's okay for dress.  But when I'm up on the bridge and feel cold and alone, I put on a very old pea jacket someone gave me a long time ago."

     We shook hands and he quickly turned his head - and stepped out into the snow.

                          By Henry Chequer, Jr.

Not Among Strangers 

     When I awoke in the army hospital, it all seemed like a bad dream.  The explosion as our jeep passed over the mine, drifting in and out of consciousness as i was rushed to the hospital, the vague awareness that I had broken bones and a concussion.

     But I was going to be all right.  Thank You, God, thank You!  Then I began to wonder what day it was.  Our unit had started out December 23rd.  That was 48 hours ago.  Then today was December 25th.  Christmas!

     I thought of my wife who was expecting our first child.  Was there any news?

     A ward boy whistled nearby while he handed out mail.  He stopped at my bedside.  "Do you think you can stand some mail from home?"

     I grabbed the packet.  The letters from my sisters and friends I put aside for later.  Of the half-dozen from my wife, I chose the one with the latest date, November 30th, and tore it open.

     "Dearest love,

     Please be careful now because there is a little girl who wants to see you very much.  She weighs six pounds, eight ounces..."

     I was a father!

     Through the blur of tears I saw a face hovering over mine.  "What's wrong?"  the nurse asked apprehensively.  Too choked up to speak, I handed her my letter.  She read it, patted my shoulder and left.

     The longing for home was stronger than ever now.  I should be with my wife and my daughter on Christmas Day!  I should be with those whom I love and who love me, not among strangers who do not care, I thought.

     I lay back staring at the ceiling, engulfed by loneliness.

     Hours later, an irritating squeak broke through my lonely reverie.  The wand boy was back, this time pushing a cart.  There were two nurses with him and a doctor and another ward boy.

     What was wrong?  Then, on the cart, I saw it, the most beautiful cake in the world.  The words on it read, "Congratulations, Daddy!"

     Someone had cared enough to salvage a sad Christmas for one lonely soldier.  In spite of the war and hatred in our world, gentleness and concern can still prevail.

                                  By Mario Picarelli

May the season's blessings,

Drift like Christmas snow,

Against your threshold and your sills;

And seal the yuletide glow

Within your household and your hearts, 

Shut out each doubt and fear;

And linger to sustain you

Throughout the coming year.

                              By Kay L. Halliwill   

25 Days of Christmas - Bonus

This could very well depict someone today with our current countries and individuals economic state.  This is a wonderful old and classic story...I believe we all can appreciate and perhaps can relate.

Merry Christmas Eve day everyone.

Gifts of the Magi

(by O. Henry)

Title and story as they appeared originally in the New York World

     One dollar and eighty-seven cents.  That was all.  And 60 cents of it was in pennies.  Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s check burned with the silent imputation of parisomny that such close dealing implied.  Three times Della counted it.  One dollar and eighty-seven cents.  And the next day would be Christmas.

     There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.  So Della did it.  Which instigates te moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

     While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second take a look at the home.  A furnished flat at $8 per week.  It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

     In the vestibule below belonged to this flat a letter-box into which no letter could go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax to ring.  Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

     The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week.  Now, when the income was shrunk to $20m the letters of “Dillingham” looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D.  But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della.  Which is all very good.

     Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.  She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence n a gray backyard.  Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.  She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result.  Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far.  Expenses had been greater than she had calculated.  They always are.  Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim.  Her Jim.  Many a happy hour she had spend planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of he honor of being owned by Jim.

     There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room.  Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat.  A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.  Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

     Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass.  Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds.  Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

     Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride.  One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s.  The other was Della’s hair.  Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry and mocked at Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts.  Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all of his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

     So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.  It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.  And then the did it up again nervously and quickly.  Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

     On went her old brown jacket; on when her old brown hat.  With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs on the street.

      Where she stopped the sign read: “Mme. Sofronie, Hair Goods of All Kinds.”  One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting, before Madame, large, too white, chilly and hardly looking the “Sofronie.”

      “Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

     “I buy hair,” said Madame, “Take yer had off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

     Down rippled the brown cascade.

     “Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

     “Give it to me quick,” said Della.

     Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.  Forget the hashed metaphor.  She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

     She found it at last.  It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.  There was none other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out.  It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do.  It was even worthy of The Watch.  As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s.  It was like him.  Quietness and value - the description applied to both.  Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents.  With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.  Grand as he watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

     When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason.  She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the revages made by generosity added to love.  Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends - a mammoth task.

     Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy.  She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully and critically.

     “If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before she takes second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.  But what could I do - oh, what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents!”

      At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

     Jim was never late.  Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered.  Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white just for a moment.  She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please, God, make him think I am still pretty.”

     The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it.  He looked thin and very serious.  Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two - and to be burdened with a family!  He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

     Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail.  His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her.  It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, not any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for.  He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

     Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

     “Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way.  I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present.  It’ll grown again - you won’t mind will you?  I just had to do it.  My hair grows awfully fast.  Say “Merry Christmas.”  Jim, and let’s be happy.   You don’t know what a nice - what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

     “You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

     “Cut it off and sold it,” said Della.  “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow?  I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

     Jim looked about the room curiously.

     “You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy. 

     “You needn’t look for it.” said Della.  “It’s sold, I tell you - sold and gone too.  It’s Christmas Eve, boy.  Be good to me, for it went for you.  Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you.  Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

     Out of his trance Jim seemed to quickly wake.  He enfolded his Della.  For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction.  Eight dollars a week or a million a year - what is the difference?  A mathematician or a wit could give you the wrong answer.  The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.  This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

     Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

     “Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me.  I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less.  But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going awhile at first.”

     White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper.  And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and than alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

     For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window.  Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims - just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.  They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.  And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

     But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

     And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

     Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present.  She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm.  The dull, precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

     “Isn’t it a dandy, Jim?  I hunted all over town to find it.  You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now.  Give me your watch.  I want to see how it looks on it.”

     Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

     “Dell,” he said, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while.  They’re too nice to use just a present.  I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.  And now suppose you put the chops on.”

     The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.  They invented the art of giving Christmas gifts.  Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.  And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.  But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were of the wisest.  Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.  Everywhere they are wisest.  They are the magi.