Christmas Gifts

Around this time of year, peoples thoughts seem to turn to what to get others for Christmas and answering family queries of “What do you want for Christmas?” It’s always difficult for me to tell anyone what I would like to have for a gift. Of course, it was not always like this. When I was a boy, I had no trouble at all reciting my two page list of gift demands. I remember one year that I absolutely had to have a pair of pogo shoes. These were cast iron implements that had springs on the bottom of them that you were supposed to be able to put on your feet and go bouncing about the neighborhood while all the local kids stared sulkily at you in extreme envy.

Well, I got the damn things. They weighed more than I did. I think that the springs on the bottom were once the suspension springs for a Mack dump truck. No matter how hard I jumped, I simply landed with a dull thud with no recoil at all. After spraining my ankle a number of times (the shoes had a tendency to twist when they landed), I put them away in the corner of the garage, never to be worn again.

I was too young them to realize that the gifts that matter most are those that come along without our really noticing them. My father and I were not very close. He was an extremely intelligent man but was very high strung and somewhat distant. For all this, he gave me a gift that has lasted me almost my whole life. His passion was music and dance. Classical music, ballet, opera – these were the staples in my life as I grew up. I never thought of these things as being “sissy stuff”. I enjoyed the ballet and still do today (opera-not so much). I took this gift as a matter of course, not realizing until many years later what a precious gift it was.

If we are fortunate, we receive gifts every day: the love of our spouse or significant other, the love and respect of our children and grandchildren, the friendship of our peers. We cannot buy these gifts for ourselves. They must be given to us freely by others. What we can do is to recognize and cherish the gift when it is received and always remember to return it in full measure.

So teach your children: Yes, the new Mambo Elmo or whatever is going to make you happy for a while but the gifts that truly matter are those that we may no even realize we have been given or those we take for granted. At this time of year, we often forget that God gave us the gift of his son, Jesus and, too soon after, Jesus gave us his most precious gift, his life. Let’s reflect on that a bit before we get disappointed at the red and green flashing tie that our grandson gave us for Christmas.

Dave McKinney – Parker, CO – Christmas, 2003

"And the greatest of these is Love."

For love in its purest sense encompasses and evinces all the other Gifts. A sublime beauty indwells each of the Gifts, revealing the tender beauty of the Spirit from whom they flow and who gives them freely and joyfully to the heart that truly desires them. Joy is the sweetness of the Spirit's presence within us, for it is this very presence that brings the Gifts to us, and Peace by the trust and faith in which we are encouraged to recognise the next step to take on our path through life, although it is all too easy for me to get this very wrong and go merrily off in entirely the wrong direction.

The other Gifts flow from the Spirit, through us and into a world desperately in need of the help, support and consolation they can bring, strengthening and softening us with their presence and allowing God's ineffably tender compassion to reach His children, to console hearts and heal their wounds. Such a reaching out, such an outpouring of the Gifts can melt, dissolve and give new warmth to a hardened heart where discipline and punishment have failed, can embrace a broken spirit and infuse it with a new healing life and can, most importantly, demonstrate even by the smallest token, a reflection of the consuming care, the delicate touch and the yearning of God for His creation and its well-being.

And it is when we choose this way, when we allow the Gifts to be given into the world, that we fulfill the Spirit's desire to be a very real part of us and to reach out into the world through us. It is His greatest delight and His intent to work in, with and through us, and by co-operating in His work, we come to realise that these Gifts are freely and abundantly given and yet can cost us dear, for they are about giving in its absolute sense, giving without thought of return, without need or desire for gratitude or even recognition, giving everything we have and everything we are to others, as the Spirit has given us Himself, and this then becomes our gift to Him in return for Himself. In this profound mutual exchange, in our response to this Gift of Himself, we find, perhaps to our own amazement, our own healing and our own new life, walking in beauty and possessing riches, however undistinguished or poor we appear to be.

Veronica Parkin

Last Month I wrote about saying thanks, and this month we look at things which are the reasons for which “thanks” are said. I speak of gifts of all kinds and classifications.

I remember one birthday gift in particular. It was a toy jet airplane that I received from a friend and it would taxi about the floor on battery power and then once in a while it would stop and the nose would open like it was ready to take on cargo. I really liked that gift and I still have it after all these 35+ years. It was the perfect gift for a boy of that age and was one which my parents probably wouldn’t have given me even if they had been able to afford it.

Although my parents couldn’t usually afford much in the way of material gifts they were more than generous with other gifts like Time, Love, Patience and Guidance. They are gifts which I appreciate beyond any other gift save the fact that they brought me into this life.

But the word “gift” has many uses. My old, battered dictionary tells me that the word gift means “1. something given or bestowed; present. 2. the act, power, or right of giving. 3. a natural ability; talent; as, a gift for art.”

Children in our schools who are exceptionally smart in one or more areas are said to be “gifted and talented” and if they are lucky there are sometimes special programs for them to follow in their educational career. I am of the opinion that most children have the potential to be what is now know as “gifted” but, due to environmental factors such as parenting and various kinds of pollution, they are seldom given the chance to develop to their full potential. I blame television as the main force in robbing children of their imaginations and stealing the time they could have used to develop their intellect, not to mention their muscles. And I blame many parents for using the TV as a babysitter, that is the ungift that keeps on taking.

We have all been gifted with this beautiful Earth to live upon. The sun shines and the wind blows and the rain falls and the crops grow. We have the potential to do much good and thereby to make gifts of ourselves and our actions. We have life.

Yet it seems to me that we, as a society, usually take these gifts and either ignore them or pervert them into harmful non-gifts, we are a society of takers, not givers. I am as guilty of this as anyone and sometimes I am not even aware of it.

Some people say that people who do Art and Music well have a “gift.” I don’t think that this is true in my case, I’ve had to work pretty hard to get to do what I can do now, I don’t feel like I’ve been “gifted” with a particular talent. If I have been “gifted” it is with a great Master and Teachers, wonderful Friends and Family, a certain amount of Patience, and by the grace of God, Time.

What I’m trying to convey here is that I feel that I’ve been gifted at least as much as I am gifted. There are so many that have given (and continue to give) me so much. Thank you to you all for all you have done. And thank you, dear reader, for visiting DaveCofell.com.

Dave Cofell
Late December, 2003