[Re-post] The Best Christmas Gifts
There is no coincidence in life. No relationship is random. Every encounter is precious and meant to be.
I’m re-posting this Christmas column from last year. Wish everyone a merry Christmas! Please feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button so more people will read it. Thank you!
At a recent holiday gathering, someone asked me what the best Christmas gift I had ever received were. It was a question that got me thinking. I appreciate all the gifts I have ever received. After all, every gift came from a thoughtful and loving person. Still, I cannot deny that some gifts probably meant more to me than others.
A Plane Ticket
I met Karyn when she was an exchange student at my college in China. She and I hit off immediately. Her laughter and humor are infectious. She and another exchange student, Melissa, were the first and the only two Americans who visited my crammed dormitory—a shoe-sized room filled with three bunk beds for six girls.
A year after we met, I came to America to pursue a master's degree in economics. The first year of being alone in a foreign country was challenging for many reasons: learning a different language, culture, and customs at the same time, struggling to make a living and survive no matter what, and often having to fight off loneliness, which liked to creep up on me uninvited and always when I was least prepared for it.
When it got closer to Christmas, all the holiday decorations, lights, and holiday music failed to cheer me up but only made me more homesick. Then, an airline ticket came in the mail. It was from Karyn; she invited me to spend Christmas with her and her family. Declining her invitation was not an option because Karyn said, “No one should spend Christmas alone.”
Thanks to Karyn, I spent my first Christmas in America with a caring friend and her loving family. I met Karyn’s mom, Lilian, and daughter, Jade, and Karyn’s then-boyfriend, Fred (they got married later). For the first time, I tasted sweet potato pie and eggnog and attended a Christmas Day service at a black church. By the way, if you want to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, you should go to a Sunday service at a black church. Everyone, especially the choir, put so much of their hearts and souls into singing hymns that their voices could have knocked a hole in the church ceiling and reached the Lord in heaven.
I have celebrated many Christmas celebrations at a few different places since then, but the first Christmas at Karyn’s home always has a special place in my heart. Among all those people I met during that Christmas visit, two of them, Fred and Lilian, have joined the Lord in eternity. Karyn is a grandma herself, and her granddaughter has grown into an impressive young lady. The cycle of life goes on, with many ends and many beginnings.
The Good News
I was about four months pregnant with Lucas by Christmas of 2017. I prayed for a long time for this child, and when I discovered that I was pregnant, I thanked God for answering my prayer.
During the first trimester, my husband and I kept quiet about the pregnancy, fearing that speaking about it too soon might somehow jinx it. Like all new, expecting parents, we were both excited and nervous.
By Christmas, my pregnancy had sailed into the second trimester smoothly. Since the baby and I were doing well, my husband and I felt comfortable sharing the good news with our extended family and friends. Everyone shared our excitement and joy. We even debated whether Christmas should be considered baby Lucas’s first Christmas.
Ultimately, we told ourselves it didn’t matter because we would celebrate many more Christmases with Lucas. I was more concerned about which daycare center I should register at and how we should ensure Lucas learns both Chinese and English simultaneously. Of course, we had no idea back then that Christmas of 2017 would be the first and last we celebrated with Lucas on this earth.
Looking back, I wish I had spent less time planning for Lucas's future but more on living the moment with him and soaking up the good news of his arrival. As Emily Dickinson reminded us: "Forever is composed of nows."
In his book about Christianity, titled "Dominion," historian Tom Holland wrote, "Enshrined at the very heart of the great mysteries elucidated by Christianity, of the birth and death, of happiness and suffering, of communion and loss, was the love of a woman for her child."
A Book
I was in no mood to celebrate the Christmas of 2018. I buried my son Lucas in May, along with many hopes, dreams, and part of my soul.
My friend Kim gifted me a children’s book called “The Littlest Angel” by Charles Tazewell. She also suggested we read it in front of Lucas’s headstone at the cemetery. Another friend, Anne, joined us.
It was an unusually warm winter day. The sunlight wrapped me up like a blanket, but I couldn’t stop shivering. The cemetery’s “baby land” section looked colorful because many families decorated their babies’ headstones with Christmas ornaments, evergreen wreaths, nutcracker soldiers, and new teddy bears. In this place of death, the families of these babies stubbornly insisted on celebrating lives and the world of the living.
Anne, Kim, and I sat in front of Lucas’s headstone. We took turns to read the book.
The book was about a little boy who died and became the littlest angel in heaven. He seemed unable to say out of trouble in the celestial city: “He inevitably sang off-key at the singing practice of the heavenly choir, spoiling its ethereal effect. And being so small that it seemed to take him just twice as long as anyone else to get to nightly prayers... His halo was permanently tarnished where he held on to it with one hot, little, chubby hand when he ran, and he was always running.”
When the Christ child was born, every other angel presented the most glorious gift to the Lord. The littlest angel had nothing to give except his little box, which was full of things he collected while alive on earth, including “a butterfly with golden wings and a sky-blue egg from a bird’s nest.” These things might seem worthless to others, but they were the littlest angel’s most treasured possessions because they represented his happiest memories of being alive.
The little boy dedicated his treasured box to the Lord. Still, he immediately worried that his box and contents were too humble and insignificant among all the glittering treasures. Yet, God proclaimed: “Among all the gifts of all the angels, I find that this small box pleases me most. Its contents are of the earth and of men, and my Son is born to be king of both. These are the things my son, too, will know, love, and cherish, and then, regretfully, will leave behind him when his task is done.”
I could barely finish reading a few sentences as I was overwhelmed by emotion, knowing that my Lucas had become one of the littlest angels. Although he didn’t have an opportunity to enjoy the contents of the earth and of men, God’s eternal love for all gives me hope that Lucas will find other excitement and joys in heaven with the excellent company of the other little angels. And hope and love are what Christmas is all about. Since then, I have read this book to Lucas every Christmas. It became a new tradition between us.
These are a few stories about some meaningful Christmas gifts to me. What are yours? A Chinese saying states: “It takes ten years of good prayers to become friends and share a boat; it takes one hundred years of good prayers to become a married couple and share a bed.” It means there is no coincidence in life, and no relationship is random. Every encounter results from years of prayers.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
