Christmas is a time for stories. And tonight, I have three of them.
The first is about Papa Panov, an old and lonely cobbler, who reads from his Bible on Christmas Eve, then falls asleep and dreams that Jesus will come to see him the next day.
He wakes excited that he will welcome the Prince of Peace and sits gazing out the window when an old vagabond knocks on his door. Catching anxious glimpses down the street for Jesus, he nonetheless invites the shivering man into and pours him a puts on a pot of coffee to ward off the chill.
Then, as the impatient Papa Panov keeps looking down the street, a poor woman approaches with her child. He gives the baby some milk and a pair of baby shoes he has been saving as the finest from his hands.
And once they all leave that Christmas morning, he sits there wondering why God did not come to see him, until he falls asleep and hears the voice of Jesus: “I was hungry and you fed me…I was naked and you clothed me. I was cold and you warmed me. I came to you today in everyone of those you helped and welcomed.”
Tolstoy continues:
Then all was quiet and still. Only the sound of the big clock ticking. A great peace and happiness seemed to fill the room, overflowing Papa Panov's heart until he wanted to burst out singing and laughing and dancing with joy.
And then there’s O’Henry’s story about Della and Jim, and how all she had been able to save was “one dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. And [how] the next day would be Christmas.”
He tells us how Della sat on the couch and cried because she could not afford to buy a gift for Jim, whom she loved with all her heart, and wanted nothing more from life than to “greatly hug” him.
There was nothing Della and Jim loved more than each other, and no pain deeper than not being able to show that love at Christmas. Surely, Jim had loved his grandfather, who had left him a treasured pocket watch, and Della was more than a little proud of her beautiful long hair, the one thing that made her feel like the Queen of Sheba.
But they loved each other most of all. So Della went to the wig maker and had him cut off her hair for twenty dollars, which she traded for a beautiful golden chain to hold Jim’s watch.
And as, that Christmas Eve, Jim came home and her saw her newly shorn hair, he was in shock, as he slowly drew a package from his overcoat pocket, which once unwrapped revealed a set of combs which Della had worshipped for a long in a Broadway window, and which Jim had bought with the money he got from selling his watch.
Thus, O’Henry sagely observes these “two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house” were the wisest of all who gave gifts that Christmas night.
And finally, there’s the best Christmas story of all, for it is true. That on this night, in a backwater town, when the world seemed very dark, a star rose in the east, and led we shepherds and wise men to a young virgin and a little baby, who came from God to tell us we were loved.
That baby grew to be a man and taught us how to love each other, how to forgive and lay down our lives for each other, as he opened his arms on a Cross for our salvation.
As, on that night angels told us to never be afraid again, for today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you, who is Christ the Lord: an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
And so then they sang: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
