The Reason for the Season

Christmas time is here! Oh how I love Christmas! I recently spoke to the kids in our school chapel service and I told them that I never knew the real meaning of Christmas until I was celebrating my twelfth one myself. Until this time I thought Christmas was all about Santa Claus and me!

My family had our own Christmas traditions. On Christmas Eve the family gathered for lunch and then when darkness came we (my niece, nephew, and myself) would go to bed. We would make attempts to sleep often times to no avail. After a couple of hours we would hear a noise that sounded like Santa.

We had been told that if he was in the house and we got up, he would put pepper in our eyes and we would never see again. With that in mind we would lay quietly until we thought we herd him leave then one of us would peek to make sure he was not in the living room. After the all clear sign came we would rush in and get our Christmas from Santa Claus.

I remember one year it was a typical cold Christmas Eve. We lay down and began to wait, and suddenly we started to hear Santa working around the tree. We waited patiently to hear no more noise to signal his completion. I was easing out of the bed to make sure he was gone when all of the sudden from outside I heard a loud BOOM! Then I herd the voice of my Dad saying, “You better get out of here you rascal!” We all ran into the living room to see what was going on, and there stood my dad with a shotgun! I faked a yawn like I had been asleep, and said, “What’s going on?”

My dad told us that he caught Santa trying to still his old truck. He said that his reindeer had flew off and left him. Dad said that he had chased him across the barbed wire fence and shot him in the rear end with birdshot. He assured us that Santa was just stinging a little and he was not seriously injured.

On my twelfth Christmas, I was 11 ½ years old. This year I would learn what Christmas was all about. Earlier that year a man came into my neighborhood driving a big red and white school bus. He gave me a piece of Bazooka Bubble gum and invited me to ride the bus to church. This was the beginning of my church life.

I would begin to ride the bus from my in Rutledge to the Baptist Tabernacle church in Covington. It was there that I first heard about Jesus Christ. He was God’s special gift to all mankind. I asked Him to be my Savior and my life was changed. This Christmas I would come to understand, “The Reason for the Season.