Medford mail tribune., December 22, 1957, Image 35

A Christmas
Gift from
Strangers
Last Christmas our daughter and son-in-law took their four chil
drenages five months to five years out to dinner in a
restaurant. It was a big occasion for the youngsters. Their faces
were all bright and shiny and they were on their best behavior.
After the meal, when the young father asked for the check, the
waitress told him it was already paid. She said a couple at a corner
table had seen them come in, remarked about the happy family scene,
then asked to pay their check.
The couple had left the restaurant by then, so the parents had no
chance to thank them. It was a pleasant way of saying "Merry Christ
mas" to an unknown family. Mrs. L.R., Walla Walla, Wash.
My Christmas Surprise. Everyone, I guess, has memories at
Christmastide. This is one of my favorites.
I am a nun and was teaching English in a junior high school in South
Carolina. Southern children, as you may know, are quite affectionate.
One day, after my lively 14-year-olds had decorated our home room
with pines and Christmas tinsel, one of my pet pupils called me to the
door and pointed at the opposite wall. I was gullible enough to look.
Before I realized what he was up to, he kissed me on the cheek while
the whole class, who knew what was going to happen, sang out, "Sister,
you're under the mistletoe!" Sister M. Xavier, St. Mary's High
School, Cumberland, Md.
A Talk With Santa. It seems ironic, but those less fortunate are
often more generous than those who can afford to be.
Each Christmas, my college sorority gave a party for children from
a nearby orphanage. One year it was my good fortune to play Santa
Claus. One by one the youngsters confided their simple wishes to me.
Just routinely, I asked the next little boy in line what toy he wanted.
He fixed his big, brown eyes on me and said, "I don't want a toy.
I just want some money to buy my little brother some shoes."
Such unselfishness in a child, I think, is as close as you can get to
the spirit of Christmas giving. Cynthia Wilson, Jackson, Tenn.
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ml
9.
. . . the minister looks down from his pulpit on
the Christmas congregation and denies himself the
bitter right to welcome the faces he will not see
again until Easter.
He preaches a sermon of love and joy com
pounded from the Christmas sermon of last year
wreathed in the new words of today, hoping it will
not be remembered and knowing it will not and
being ashamed for knowing.
Below him the sleepers nod and the youngsters
wriggle and the women admire the flowers and
their own finery.
When he has finished, he will walk to the door to
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accept the murmured haste of words and the in
sincerity of praise and the furtive handclasps of
the backsliders. And then he will go into his study
and sit there and fight a battle with himself and
pray an empty prayer.
Is it hopeless? Was man given ears which cannot
hear? Was he given a self to deny selflessness? A
mind to learn but not to believe?
You have been heard, minister. Among those
who see are those who listen. Among those who
come for duty are those who stay to remember.
And, if there are hundreds who see or sit and only
one who hears, is that not enough?
The Man whose birth you proclaim today was
only a minor prophet in His time. On the shore and
in the market place there were those who came to
eat and drink and feast themselves in the sun and
breeze. They came to meet their friends, to view
a curiosity, to laugh and talk and pass the time.
The words you have cherished for us for 2,000
years, minister, might have immortalized them all.
But they were asking only miracles they could not
believe.
Only a few hear a minister.
Only a few heard the Man.
It was enough.