If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)
Christmas is in sight. It is close and I have just about finished my shopping. Nothing more now than stocking stuffers.
Ella and I have Santa come each year. She was raised in a family that de-emphasized Santa Claus and opened their presents all on Christmas Eve. I came from a family that opened a present or two on Christmas Eve but got presents under the tree “from Santa” on Christmas morning.
I like my tradition better. So does she. It is a lot more fun.
So what we do is have a present or two under the tree for Christmas Eve and then go to bed. Sometime during the night, “Santa” comes and when we wake up in the morning, there are presents and stockings filled with little goodies.
Well, one year it was a gold necklace, but for the most part, the stockings are for candy and stuff.
The first year we were married, it was funny. She had no idea of really what to do with the stocking. So on Christmas morning, her stocking was stuffed, stuff falling out of the top, candy, fruit, presents all around it. My stocking was kind of pathetic. She had even taken some of the candy canes off her stocking and put them on mine so it would not be so forlorn looking.
She just had never had a stocking. She figured it out by next year, though.
We were married for six years before we had our first child. The Christmas before she conceived, we decided that we would not have any more child-less Christmases. They were boring and were over so quickly.
Oh, the stocking set up for our ten month old daughter the first year. She was the first grand child on both sides and was lavished with stuff for the first few years until finally there were more grandkids.
But we always had stockings for them even after they grew up. And we even had one for their husbands and wives.
And now we have had one for our grandson, Brody, since he was born three years ago.
One year we had a homeless man living with us, named Joel. We even had a stocking for him that year. It blew him away. He mentioned at one point that it was the first stocking he remembered having in a couple of decades. When I pointed it out to him, he just sat and looked at it for a while.
Christmas morning, there was stuff in it. Not a lot, but there was a fleece cap and muffler and gloves, a large package of Mounds candy (his favorite since he didn’t have any dental uppers) and a couple of other things. We even gave him a fleece lined flannel shirt for Christmas.
When he died (he had AIDS), I gave them away to others. But for his last Christmas, he had a stocking.
The funny thing is, though, with our kids all living a distance away, we no longer have them with us. But we still have the stockings.
I wonder what Santa will put in mine Christmas morning?
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