Saturday, December 2, 2017

Christmas From the Heart

It was in in 1982 that I found myself with not a penny to my name and it was the day before Xmas. I was a single mother with two children and my son’s birthday was on Xmas day. I was feeling terribly sad and not knowing what to do. In a walk to the letterbox to check the mail with no thought in my mind, I opened the post box to find an envelope in it with a R100 check in it made out to me. There was no sender and it was a bank cheque.

I drove my clapped out beetle, with no floorboards, so the children had to sit with their feet on the seats as we could watch the tar passing by as we drove and I went to the bank and asked them who had sent the check to me. They told me that it was an anonymous gift.

That R100 made the most wonderful Christmas with food and presents including a special one for my birthday child.

I have never forgotten that Christmas donation and every Christmas since that day, I have found a family to repeat the gift that was given to me.

It was also that Christmas that we started the tradition of no Christmas gifts for one another but rather a letter written to one another, recounting all the good things that that person had done or had meant to us during the year. It sounds like a simple enough gift, but the letters took a long time to write because it had to incorporate everything good that had come from that person for the entire year. The other rule was that the letter had to be handwritten and had to have a handmade envelope.

That Christmas tradition as a gift has been a tradition since 1982 – no Christmas presents for the three of us but a beautiful letter showing us what we mean to one another.

Getting these gifts of letters ready to be in time for Xmas has to be started on the 1^st of December to be in time for the 25^th. The only gift that is given is to my son whose birthday he shares with Jesus.

Perhaps you may like to make this a tradition for your Christmas instead of buying into the commercial Xmas that most people turn into a frenzy of buying and over-eating.

I would like to wish you a Christmas that will be filled with good memories for years to come and that the new year brings you everything you need. Merry Christmas!!