12.24.24 – Merry Christmas! Joy To The World!

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

Christmas. I guess we all have very different memories of Christmas, and I have mine, and I’d like to share some of them with you. Back then in, my goodness, can you imagine, 1945, when I was five years old, we were just young kids, the three of us, in my hometown in England. There was my sister, who was four years older than I was. and her name was Pam, and my brother was one and a quarter years older than I was, Charlie, and we used to get so excited about Christmas. My dad was an industrial fisherman. That means that he was a fisherman that stayed out for 10 days at a time in a ship that he was captain of. Actually, they called him a skipper. skipper of the boat, and there were about 17 men on board that boat. They would ply the North Sea for fish every 10 days, then he’d be home for two days or three, mostly two, and then he’d go back to the sea. But Dad would always make sure he came home for Christmas. And oh boy, what an anticipation Christmas was. I think we could hardly hold ourselves together for about six weeks before Christmas. Mum would buy a tree, a Christmas tree. We didn’t have a big house, but it fitted somehow into the living room. And we used to, and she would collect over the years all of these, what we call Christmas toys in England. They’re not toys, but they’re baubles and shiny things. And over the years, she had so many of these bright and beautiful things that there was hardly room for any more. You could hardly see the tree. And I remember as well that after a certain time, we bought an artificial tree. But it wasn’t an artificial evergreen. It was a white one made of feathers so that it looked like a snow-covered tree. And we had that all through the rest of my young days in my hometown before I went to college. And then we’d put up trimmings. Now, trimmings were, oh, how shall I say it? Anyway, these various colored crepe long tassels stretching across the room from the light to each corner of the room. And then we draped that crepe paper with tinsel. So it was quite a Christmassy atmosphere in our house. And then we had this little ritual. You know, various families have various rituals, of course. But the one we had was that Dad, when he came home from sea, he and Mom would put out some Christmas cake and a little glass of wine for Father Christmas, who we call Santa Claus over here. By the way, the Christmas cake was really a Christmas loaf. It was made by Mom, who never told us the recipe, and I begged her to let me know what the recipe was, but she said, oh, I just put this and that together. It was made of various fruits, apples, oranges, and various nuts and flour, of course, but it wasn’t soggy. It was like a fruit loaf. and you’d spread butter on that, and then a nice slice or two of sharp cheddar cheese on top. And you’d have that with a cup of tea, and boy, was that delicious. I can just taste it now. But Mom never shared that recipe, and so I’ve never been able to know how to make that cake. But anyway, they’d put a slice out on a plate, and have this glass of wine, and they’d say, now this is for Santa Claus, and I would be looking up, just a little boy of four or five, and I could hardly reach the top of the table, and I would look at this cake and wine, and then the next morning, wow, Christmas morning, it had gone. So Santa Claus had been. He actually came down the chimney, how he ever got down our chimney, a real chimney with a fireplace that we warmed the house with, how he ever got down there, I’ll never know. But anyway, in the morning I was filled with awe that Santa Claus had arrived and brought all these presents. Now, of course, Pam and Charlie and I were so utterly excited by all this that we simply had to go to bed early. I mean, we kids made ourselves go to bed early on Christmas Eve because we couldn’t stand the excitement of waiting for Christmas morning. So we went to bed about 6 o’clock. And as far as I can recall, we actually slept early. until about 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning. But that was the very time Mom and Dad were filling our stockings. Well, actually, they were not stockings. I know this sounds terribly decadent, but they were pillowcases. We had pillowcases of Christmas gifts. And mom and dad were wrapping the presents and filling the pillowcases from about two in the morning till four. And they were just about ready to go to bed when Pam or I or Charlie would call out, mom, can we get up now? And she said she’d say, oh, no, wait a little longer, and maybe 10 or 15 or 20 minutes or half an hour later we’d call out, can we get up now? So that’s how it was. But she finally relented, and the three of us rushed downstairs in our pajamas, and we started ripping open these presents. And, you know, we ripped open those presents before Mom and Dad even got up, and all they saw when they got up was a whole pile of paper strewn all over the floor, and we just looking at and loving and enjoying our presents. Yeah, it was a high time. And it was an exciting time. And my mom and dad, I give thanks to God for them. They were solid parents, really good parents, although I missed dad a lot and didn’t bond with him well because he was away. Ten days out of 12 at sea. And before that, he was in the Second World War as an acting lieutenant, minesweeping the Nazi bombs. What do we call them? I’ve forgotten the floating devices in the sea. so that the food supply could continue to come from the United States to England and not be blown up by these mines. So Christmas was an incredibly beautiful thing. But, of course, it was all kind of pagan, wasn’t it? Mom and Dad were not churchgoers, although they were in some limited ways believers in God, in Jesus. They only went to church for births, marriages, and deaths, what we call in England hatches, matches, and dispatches. although they did send us to Sunday school. I remember hating the whole experience of Sunday school, and when Charlie, my brother, went to the next class, I cried my eyes out and didn’t want to go to Sunday school anymore because my brother wouldn’t be there. But she arranged it, and so I was able to go to Charlie’s class. So it was all very strange and awesome and wonderful because I still believed in the mystery of Santa Claus and still believed in the awesomeness of Christmas and the excitement of it. I do remember, you know, I think I couldn’t have been more than three years old, sitting in my cot, I think it was at that time, on Christmas night, not Christmas Eve, realizing that it was all over. Christmas was over. We’d waited for six weeks for it, and now it was gone. And it seemed so empty to that little boy that I can even see now, sitting in his cot, with all the presents strewn around him and no more left to open. How strange life is that it can leave us with emptiness after all the excitement, with nothing left. Actually, I remember one, well, I don’t remember it, but my mum told me about it, about the time when, after about an hour of Christmas morning opening all our presents, we were found in the bathroom, my brother and I, playing with paper ships in the bathtub. and all the toys were left downstairs waiting later to be played with. It was when I became a Christian at 15, I went to a meeting that I thought was a meeting on flying saucers. I’ve told you that many times, I think. But in fact, it was a lecture by a preacher on the second coming of Christ called Man from Another World. And it caught my heart and turned me around on a dime and brought me to Jesus and gave me the joy that Christmas had only for a day before it left me empty. I found joy, joy, joy. non-stop joy for six months when I first became a Christian. Night and day I woke up with joy in my heart, with the thought that Jesus was coming again and was going to make the earth all new again, and there would be no more death or sorrow or tears or crying or pain, and that the children would… play over the nest of a viper, and a lion and a lamb would dwell together, and there would be no hurt in God’s holy mountain. And then I began to realize that, oh, I had completely misunderstood Christmas. that Christmas was, yes, happy times with family, yes, happy times with Christmas cake and Father Christmas coming, supposedly, and all the lovely Christmas decorations, the Christmas tree and the trimmings, but it was about the greatest gift of all, Jesus. Jesus, God among men, giving himself as a gift to the world, a gift to the world to take away all the emptiness of our souls, all the emptiness of the after-Christmas present opening. all the emptiness that life brings as we go through experiences that excite us for a while and then bring us disappointment. Jesus had come to take away all our sins. He had come to bring the presence of God to the world. And he had come to take this kingdom back to his own Father so that one day he will return again and everything will be colossally beautiful, beyond description. Our joy will be complete. It will never end. We will find joy in his presence forevermore. So in the midst of all the gifts, in the midst of all the family gatherings, in the midst of all the mince pies, as we call them in England, in the midst of all the Christmas dinners and the family gatherings and the presents, the one present is what is important, Jesus and his gift of eternal life. Thank you so much for listening, and I wish you a happy Christmas and a prosperous new year. And if you’re alone… You’re not alone. The angels, the Holy Spirit, Jesus are with you on Christmas Day. So thank you. See you next time. God bless.