Christmas is a time for friends, family, and
traditions. So often in our busy lives however, we get caught up in the
commercial aspects of Christmas and forget the real meaning behind the holiday.
It doesn’t matter what religion you are, the meaning of the season should
remain the same. It should be a time to become closer to the ones you love, and
share with them not just gifts, great food, and maybe a little eggnog, but to
spend time together, sharing memories, and creating new ones.
One thing many of our members remember from
Christmas’s past is snuggling up with mom and dad and the rest of the family,
and reading Christmas stories and poems. Celts of
Twas
the Night Before Christmas
(Also known as “A Visit from St. Nicholas”)
by
Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through
the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now,
Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash
away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."
The Bells
Edgar Allen Poe
Hear the sledges with the bells--- Silver Bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle,tinkle,tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells,
bells,---
From the jingling and tinkling of the bells.
The Three Kings
Henry
Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.
The star was so beautiful, large and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they knew that the coming was near
Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.
Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows,
Three caskets of gold with golden keys;
Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.
And so the Three Kings rode into the West,
Through the dusk of the night, over hill and dell,
And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast,
And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest,
With the people they met at some wayside well.
"Of the child that is born," said Baltasar,
"Good people, I pray you, tell us the news;
For we in the East have seen his star,
And have ridden fast, and have ridden far,
To find and worship the King of the Jews."
And the people answered, "You ask in vain;
We know of no King but Herod the Great!"
They thought the Wise Men were men insane,
As they spurred their horses across the plain,
Like riders in haste, who cannot wait.
And when they came to
Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,
Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;
And said, "Go down unto
And bring me tidings of this new king."
So they rode away; and the star stood still,
The only one in the grey of morn;
Yes, it stopped --it stood still of its own free will,
Right over Bethlehem on the hill,
The city of David, where Christ was born.
And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard,
Through the silent street, till their horses turned
And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard;
But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred,
And only a light in the stable burned.
And cradled there in the scented hay,
In the air made sweet by the breath of kine,
The little child in the manger lay,
The child, that would be king one day
Of a kingdom not human, but divine.
His mother Mary of
Sat watching beside his place of rest,
Watching the even flow of his breath,
For the joy of life and the terror of death
Were mingled together in her breast.
They laid their offerings at his feet:
The gold was their tribute to a King,
The frankincense, with its odor sweet,
Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,
The myrrh for the body's burying.
And the mother wondered and bowed her head,
And sat as still as a statue of stone,
Her heart was troubled yet comforted,
Remembering what the Angel had said
Of an endless reign and of David's throne.
Then the Kings rode out of the city gate,
With a clatter of hoofs in proud array;
But they went not back to Herod the Great,
For they knew his malice and feared his hate,
And returned to their homes by another way.
Gift of the Magi
O.Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty
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 cheeks burned with the silent
imputation of parsimony 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 the 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 was a letter-box into which no
letter
would go, and an electric button from which no mortal
finger
could coax a 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 $20,
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 in 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 spent planning for
something
nice for him. Something fine and rare and
sterling--something
just a little bit near to being worthy
of the
honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the
room.
Perhaps you have seen a pierglass
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
the
flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair
hang
out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her
Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the
janitor,
with all 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
she 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 went 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
to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair
Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected
herself,
panting. Madame, large, too white,
chilly, hardly
looked
the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat 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 no 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
the 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 ravages
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
he
takes a 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 for
just a
moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent
prayer
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, nor 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 because I couldn't
have lived
through
Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow
out
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 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 quickly to 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 would 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 a
while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and
paper.
And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, 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 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 up 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," said he, "let's put our
Christmas presents away
and
keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at
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 presents. 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 the wisest. Of all who give
and
receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they
are
wisest. They are the magi.