There are
many areas where that title applies.
One would be Thanksgiving. Remember
how the pilgrims survived their first winter in the new land, raised their
crops and with a bountiful harvest shared a feast? They needed a feast, the poor
people were half starving. And so the story goes, they gave thanks, and invited
their neighbors. Some of their neighbors happened to be the native peoples who
lived on the land before they arrived. The Natives brought wild turkeys and
corn, and thus introduced a tradition.
Few of us
need a feast, but we do need to give thanks.
And now with
Christmas coming up I want to find the gold, not follow a grumbling scenario: “Oh yeah I need to cook for eight hours, eat
for fifteen minutes, and clean up for seven days.”
I’m not doing it.
I want to
find the gold.
The gold is
to celebrate the great high holidays in a spirit of joy, gratitude, and glad
tidings.
The winter
celebration goes back Pre-Christian. The Winter Yule, the Solstice, marked the
shortest day, longest night. Trees that
stayed green all year held in high regard, and so people took evergreen
branches into the house to remind them that life would spring again.
The peoples
of Germany introduced the Tannerbnaum, that was they brought an entire
evergreen tree into the house. Before that peoples built wooden pyramidal shaped
frames and decorated it with branches. Martin Luther, inspired by the twinkling
stars, is credited with placing candles on the Christmas frame.
Imagine the
delight of a Christmas tree beaming with candles? I can feel the awe in my bones.
Stockings
hung by the chimney with care. So the
story goes, a poor widower had three daughters. Because he could not afford a
dowry, he believed his daughters would never marry and thus never be taken care
of, but he would not accept charity. Saint Nickolas heard of his plight, and on Christmas Eve he slid down the chimney, and seeing the girl's stockings hanging by the chimney to dry, he filled them with gold coins.
Imagine Christmas
morning.
The winter
celebration has a long tradition, embellished often, and special to the peoples
around the world. When Jesus was
introduced into it, it brought new meaning to the faithful. A child is born.
The angels sing. And what did they sing? “Good Tidings to all, and Goodwill to
all men.”
"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11
o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet)
with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen
elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe
is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha,
you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a
German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the
British and Germans met and shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, and
exchanged souvenirs, and shook hands. Yes, all day Christmas day, and as I
write. Marvelous, isn't it?“
(Future nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother, 1914)
Captain Robert
Patrick Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, recalled in an edited letter that was published in both the Daily Mail and the Wellington
Journal & Shrewsbury News in
January 1915:
We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day
imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly
understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in
front. Of the Germans he wrote: "They are distinctly bored with the
war...In fact one of them wanted to know what on earth we were doing here
fighting them." )
One
Christmas Eve night, a man riding home in his sleigh, emblazoned the story of
Saint Nickolas aka Santa Claus, into our minds and hearts. This father wanted
something to give his six children, so he scratched out the poem, ”A Visit from
Saint Nickolas.” That was Clement Moore, and his poem has become known as “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”
In Moore’s
poem, St. Nicholas was a “Right jolly old elf.” “He was dressed all in furs
from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and
soot.”
“He went
right to his work and filled the stockings, and laying a finger beside his nose
and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.“
And what did
he call out as his sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer sailed off into the
night sky?
“A Happy Christmas to all and to all a Good
Night.”
The Miracle of the Dog and the Babe:
This was a homeless dog dumpster digging when he found a human infant with its umbilical cord still attached. The dog carried the baby about 100 feet and gave it to a human who rushed it to the hospital. The baby was not injured by the dog, and it survived.