LETTERS FROM HOME: CHRISTMAS LETTER 1996: GIVING RARE GIFTS

Dec. 19, 1996

Here's hoping our latest snowfall lasts long enough to glisten with the light of Christmas Eve's full moon, but you know those moments are rare gifts.

One of many kinds.

Clement Moore, a biblical scholar, wrote a poem for his children nearly 200 years ago. By accident it was published and became "The Night Before Christmas."

The book I remember from childhood contained enchanted images of a cozy family whose visitation by a merry elf and eight tiny reindeer was told in words so vivid that many adults can repeat them still.

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly/When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky/So up to the housetops the coursers they flew/with a sleigh full of toys and Saint Nicholas too."

Looking for that book in my parents' junk room recently, I found my boyhood BB gun, which was a Christmas present, and my old "electronic" football game, another. "Electronic" because while electronic games today create near-virtual realities, mine motivated small figures to bounce aimlessly on a metal board by giving them an electrical hot foot.

Standing there among my childhood artifacts, a grade school Christmas play came to mind, me playing the part of the king who bears myrrh to the Christ child. Knowing only, then and now, of its bitter perfume.

Sometimes the gifts we have for others are mysteries to ourselves.

The book couldn't be found. There were two newer versions bought for grandchildren but their drawings do not provoke the sugarplum visions mine did. Those drawings, those words, were a rare gift to children.

There is a legend that Handel wrote his "Messiah" at one time, in tears of joy over the celestial music pouring into his head. This was his gift of joy to the world.

One of the reporters at the newspaper is writing a story about why people give at Christmas. The question is, Why don't we give all the time? My guess: We think giving to others means sacrificing ourselves -- whether that's a matter of giving things, attention or love.

Fortunately, the universe doesn't work that way, doesn't penalize giving. Just the opposite. In a cosmos made of energy, holding back is an attempt to block the tide of life. To give is natural, not to give unnatural.

Still, the hardest gift of all to give is yourself, I think. To always be open, always pay attention, to always respond, to always make yourself available. To love no matter what.

But to withhold yourself from the world or from another is to believe you are too weak to give all you have. Peace on Earth awaits peace in our souls.

The gifts DC and I have been given are both near and far away: beloved families, constant friends, meaningful work, hound dogs we belong to as much as they belong to us.

DC, Hank and Lucy are mending from a car accident that could have turned out much worse. Hank received the least of the blows but trembles now when placed in a car.

Our house is "starting to come together," DC says. So's her practice, my golf game, the neighborhood. The world seems always to be in a state of starting to come together.

As I write, a light snow has begun falling. Each time is new and yet reminds me of the gift of all the snowfalls and all the Christmases that have ever been.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.