Call me old-fashioned or sentimental, but I still enjoy this time of the year, the music associated with it, and the good will and feelings of brotherhood that tend to prevail at this time.
I also enjoy the retelling of the heart-warming stories of love and compassion that have accumulated over the years with holiday themes, and learning about the various holiday traditions and how they came about.
I would like to share with you all a heartwarming story I heard on Armed Forces Radio many years ago when I was stationed in Spain as a member of the USAF.
According to the story, in some Christmas traditions, Santa Claus not only delivers gifts every Christmas Eve, but also the family Christmas tree (at least to some homes). However, Santa's own tree was a gift from God Himself, delivered by an angel each Christmas Eve, just before he left on his yearly rounds. It seems that one Christmas season, Santa had experienced a particularly hard time. The elves had been on strike, which had just barely been resolved in time, there had been annoying breakdowns in the toy factory, Santa was still feeling miserable from a bout of flu that he was just getting over, one of the reindeer had gotten sick and barfed all over his red suit, which was late back from the cleaners, he had to make a last minute repair on one of the runners on his sleigh, he had just had a rare argument with Mrs Claus (no doubt brought on, in part, by his general frustration and irritability resulting from all the problems), etc. About the only thing that went right was the on time delivery of his Christmas tree by the precious little angel who was assigned that year to deliver it. She sweetly and innocently asked Santa where he would like her to put it. And that is how the tradition got started of setting an angel on top of the Christmas tree!
Now wasn't that a touching little story?
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