Characteristics of Christmas

The meaning of Christmas lies beyond
the lights and tinsel.

I hadn’t planned to post anything until the New Year; but tonight I was going through folders and folders of writing that I’ve collected on my computer hard drive over the years—something I do when I’m bored but want to feel productive (I like tweaking words and punctuation and checking for errors that have escaped my meticulous eye). I found a poem that I wrote for Christmas nearly twenty years ago, called “Characteristics of Christmas.”

My love of writing began early in my life, and I can remember writing my first story in Third Grade. I did enjoy the entertainment of my Sega Genesis video game system and watching Nickelodeon for hours on end; but sitting at our kitchen table with nothing but lined paper, a pencil, and an idea was an even richer form of both leisure and fun for me.

I can remember writing several stories during a school year—some for homework, and some just for fun. I was always so proud of them, and loved to share them with doting teachers. In Fourth Grade my teacher taught us how to write poetry using some prompt words that he encouraged us all to interpret individually. I think I still have it somewhere, in my plastic tote of memorabilia. In Fifth Grade I wrote a poem for class about Halloween, the first rhyming poem I’d ever done. My teacher was so impressed by it that she submitted it to a district-wide Halloween poetry contest, and I won first place.

Christmas is more than trimmed trees
and treat-filled stockings.

I had no idea I’d even been in the contest until a classmate and her mother showed up at our door around 9:00PM one night to congratulate me, as they’d just come from the award ceremony where my name was announced and my poem read aloud at a microphone by an adult performer. I still have the award certificate with a gold ribbon attached to it; I think I won ten or twenty dollars, too, and I’m sure I spent it on a burger and fries, which was a rare delicacy growing up in the 90’s with a mother who cooked all our meals.

After that Halloween poem success, I made a habit of writing about different holidays; I still have poems for Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, and the Christmas one. I know I started some for April Fool’s Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving, but I never finished them. Much like the case is today, I cannot usually write without some kind of inspiration, or at the least a ‘mood’ for writing. I’m not surprised that I couldn’t come up with anything for those holidays; I still have pieces that I’ve been working on for years, and maybe one day I’ll finish and maybe post them here.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share the Christmas poem I wrote in December 1998, when I was twelve years-old. It’s interesting to recognize that the characteristics of Christmas, to me, were the familiar images of trees, lights, snow, and traditional Santa Clause folklore. I describe those things in rhyme in eight verses, using the last two to convey a heartfelt message from a boy who did not yet know the reason for the season. Ten verses total, of course; even in my youth my obsessive compulsive need for counting things in fives was noticeable (and surely that hasn’t changed).

The true characteristics of Christmas are
the gifts from the Savior of the World.

Though I did not quite know exactly who the babe was who lay in the manger in my mother’s ceramic nativity set, I still understood that there was something special about Christmas; something you could feel at that time of year that seemed, for some reason, difficult to sense the rest of the year. I also determined, though young as I was, that Christmas was not a passive event, but a deeper ritual symbolizing a spirit of goodwill and gladness, one toward another. And while the nostalgia of sleepless Christmas Eves, opening presents before sunrise, and my mother’s breakfast on Christmas morning are what live on from my childhood holidays, nowadays I have a better understanding of why we celebrate this glorious time of year in the first place.

The words of LDS Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley (1910 – 2008) always ring truer when I ponder this wondrous season:

          “Christmas means giving. The Father gave His Son, and the Son gave His life. Without giving there is no true Christmas, and without sacrifice there is no true worship. There is more to Christmas than neckties, earrings, toys, and all the tinseled stuff of which we make so much. 

          ~ President Gordon B. Hinckley, "'What Shall I Do Then With Jesus Which is Called Christ?'" Ensign, Dec. 1983.

Indeed, the true characteristics of Christmas are and ought to be the characteristics of the Savior Jesus Christ and the feelings that emanate from His perfect life: Love, Peace, Forgiveness, Service, Joy, Hope, Charity, Faith, and the belief in Miracles.

May your Christmas be blessed by His presence in your life.

❧

– Characteristics of Christmas –

~

Snow is falling

Down so sound,

Laying a blanket

Of white on the ground.

The tree releases

The sweet scent of pine;

Presents sit under,

One yours, one mine.

The Christmas lights filter

Through the darkness of night;

Santa Clause walks the roof,

Stepping so light.

His reindeer await

So patient and calm

For Santa to pull the reins,

Then they are gone.

The sleigh that he rides in

Sparkles of jewels;

Cushioned in velvet,

Fashioned with tools.

The elves at the Workshop,

At the North Pole,

Get ready for next year—

With a long way to go!

The plate of warm cookies

We left out for him,

Have filled up his belly

For his long night’s trip.

We find the next morning
Our stockings are filled; 

The presents have doubled, 

The wrapping is skilled.

The spirit of Christmas
We hold in our hearts;
When we let it out,

The holiday starts.

So make Christmas a feeling,
Not just something you do;

Merry Christmas from me, 

Merry Christmas to you!

~

- Wade A. Walker -

December 1998 

"Wise men [and women] still seek Him."

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