The "Sensible Christmas" Skit

Yesterday our family was scheduled to sing and play for an assisted living apartment complex in town. When we arrived, the activity center where we were to be was beautifully decorated.

The three girls played most of the Christmas carols. I sang with one of them, the Christmas version of "Hallelujah."

 We had decided to do a little reading and skit like we did two years ago. That time we had done the story of the "Tumbleweed Christmas." 

We had found the biggest tumbleweed we could find to be the Christmas tree in the story.

 This year, I had opened up my book, The Guideposts Christmas Treasury, and the first story I read somewhere near the front was the one I picked--"The Year We Had a Sensible Christmas." No need to look for a better story!

Carrie read of how for as long as the author remembered, his family had talked about having a "sensible" Christmas without all the fuss and bother. (and could I ever relate after a very busy afternoon of getting ready after having company for Sunday dinner and  packing up extra food to take to Grandpa in town after the program. I was going pretty crazy!

 Mom in the story would come limping home from shopping or sink into a chair after hours of baking. (Note apron!)

 "Next year we're going to have a sensible Christmas!" she would gasp.

And the children lived in dread the parents would actually follow through.

Until it happened.

But there was one thing Henry and his sister Lizzie did wish would change. 

 

And that was Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Amelia.

"Many a time Lizzie and I wondered why families had to have relatives, and especially why it was our fate to inherit Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Amelia. They were a sour and formal pair who came to us every Christmas, bringing Lizzie and me handkerchiefs as gifts and expecting in return silence, respect, service, and for me to surrender my bedroom."

If only those two could be deleted from the Christmas story, they would be happy. 

But Great Uncle and Aunt were as much a part of Christmas "as mistletoe."

 

 And then one year it happened. After Henry went to college, Mom came up with the brilliant idea that this year would be the year to have a "sensible Christmas." They would not exhaust themselves with "all the folderol," she wrote Henry. And besides, Dad added, they would not spend more than one dollar for gifts for each other. "For once," he said, "we'll worry about the thought behind the gifts, and not about its price."

Both Mom and Dad agreed with Henry's suggestion that Christmas be limited to just the four of them. Mom wrote a gracious letter to the great uncle and aunt explaining that the family was not doing much for Christmas this year and therefore great uncle and aunt might prefer not to make the great effort to come. Dad added a nice check to the card. 

And voila! No great uncle and aunt to deal with this time!

The tree was small that year, but everyone thought their one-dollar gifts were enormously clever. They enjoyed a meal at Dempsey where Mom didn't have to bake a turkey or pies or any such thing. The only awkward moment was when they weren't quite sure whether to hold hands around the table as they did at home, but in short order, they got over that, and then "in unison we refused to be intimidated by a public eating place and held hands and said grace."

 

Everyone had time to sit around and rest and read.  

And discuss Mom's missing fruit cake which Lizzie un-diplomatically declared she did not like anyway.

"But Aunt Amelia adored it," Mom remembered. "And so did Mrs. Donegan down the street," who hadn't gotten her Christmas gift this year.

Dad (whose part was played by  Danny) fell asleep behind the newspaper, snoring loudly,

much to the amusement of the rest of the family.

But when Henry went to the refrigerator to pick at the leftover turkey, only to discover none, that did it.

Mom burst into tears. 

 "This terrible, dreadful, sensible Christmas!" was all she could say.

"Our Christmas had been as artificial as that Christmas tree; at some point the spirit of the day had just quietly crept away from us. In our efforts at common sense we had lost the reason for Christmas and had forgotten about others; this denied Him whose birthday it was all about."

 

"Mom feels," Lizzie wrote Henry later when he was back at college, "that the strains and stresses are the birth pangs of Christmas..I'm certain that it is out of our efforts and tiredness and turmoil that some sudden, quiet, shining, priceless thing occurs."

 

 The next Christmas the family poured heart and soul into their celebration.

Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Amelia came to join them, almost merry this time, as well!

But it was when they joined hands around the table that Henry realized something he never noticed before. 

Aunt Amelia's hand he was holding was cold. And gnarled.

Years of agonizing arthritis had twisted them. 

Yet as usual, there had been the gift of handkerchiefs, painstakingly embroidered by those very gnarled hands! 

Those handkerchiefs--Aunt Amelia's gift of love for them!