Well Christmas has been and gone, with many festivities in its wake…

The Trinity carol service at the Centaur always gets me in the mood for Christmas and this year was no exception.  It tends to give a break from the madness and bring in to focus what Christmas is all about.  Which leads me on to a  very special book that I have just read…

The book is probably aimed at children, but you know how sometimes a very simple principle gives you a slap in the face and shows you something that you have known for ages in a completely different light.  The book is called “The Christmas box”.

The synopsis is very simple.  An American family (husband, wife and small girl) who are very poor, move in to a large house with an old lady so that the wife can cook and clean for her.  The husband has started a suit rental business which is occupying most of his time.

He is troubled by some music that he hears at night, coming from a beautiful wooden box that they have found in the attic of their living quarters.  The box has a nativity carved into the top.  Eventually, curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the box.  He is astonished to find a series of letters, written by the old lady at Christmas to an unknown recipient (assumed to be her late husband).  They express a great love and a desire that the recipient should still be here.

One day it transpires that the old lady has become very ill.  She has a tumour in her head which cannot be operated on and so is dying.  The man is still working long hours and not seeing much of his small daughter, who becomes very close to the old lady.  One day she challenges him about the time he spends at work, asking if he really knows what is important in life.  She asks him a simple question.  “What was the very first Christmas gift?”  He doesn’t know, despite the family believing in God.

Eventually the old lady’s time is up and she goes into hospital.  The man is troubled and speaks to one of her neighbours.  It turns out that there is a secret garden behind her house, which shields a graveyard.  The old lady would go there every day, even in the pouring rain and lie face down on a grave crying her eyes out and digging her nails into the soil.  Upon further investigation they discover that the old lady had lost a child years ago and could not bear the separation.  She loved the child so much that she would cling to the grave crying and beating the ground.  Every Christmas she would write a letter to the child and place it in the Christmas box, stating how much she wished the child was still with her.
At the same time, a man comes into the suit rental shop and asks to buy a suit.  The owner tries to persuade him to rent the suit as children grow so quickly.  It is then that he says that the suit is to bury his little boy in.  This man too, is very sad.

When visiting the old lady in hospital as she dies, she is excited to be reunited with her child.  The man suddenly realises what the first Christmas gift was, the answer to the old lady’s question.  God, like the old lady, was so devastated to be separated from his children, so pained, and loved them so much, that He had to do something to be reunited with them.  The first gift of Christmas was a very great love.  The kind of love/pain that a parent feels for a child who has been taken away from them unjustly.

This Christmas I thank God for that love and His gift of Jesus.  I also feel for all those who have lost children.