December 23rd

Christmas is not my favorite holiday.  Let me rephrase that, the Consumer Christmas is not my favorite holiday.  Granted, there are things I like about Christmas like gift giving and making treats.  But it really stops there.  Christmas to me is just a major pain in the butt!  Decorating the tree and hanging lights seem like chores.  It's not that I am not in the Christmas spirit, because I really am...just a different type of spirit.  Yes, the tree is decorated and I have a nativity displayed, but nothing can top December 23rd 1995 for showing me what Christmas is really all about.  Everything else is a pale shadow...only a let down and a glitter covered mockery.  


I was a witness to a Christmas miracle of my own on that day.  November 1995, I was living in an old pioneer home in Santa Clara Utah as a missionary.  My companion was a french nazi...not really, but almost.  We were having amazing success in the area due to the fact that Sisters hadn't been in that area for years.  Sometimes, girls can touch different people in different ways.  Let me tell you, they loved us.  We had 10 baptisms one month.  One lady we tried to contact, said she wasn't interested, but then called me back a few days later.  We hit it off from the start.  Her name was Jennifer Roberts.  She was 22 and had just had twin girls 20 months previous.  I began teaching her, after we realized that my companion and her were just not clicking at all.  She had the empathy of a paint can that girl, but was a really hard worker...so she watched the little girls.  And eventually, she accepted an invitation to be baptized.  Thing was, her husband was a returned missionary but had become inactive...not less active...inactive.  She was golden.  A california girl that had a zeal for life that was contagious.  And so she asked her husband to baptize her.  He began working with his bishop to get reactivated and ready to baptize his wife.  His whole family was excited.  We were thinking maybe in the spring, but his bishop had other plans....a baptism before Christmas.  


As she walked to into the font, he wept.  Not a dry eye in the whole room.  After he immersed her in the water, they stood there in each others arms and cried for what seemed like minutes.  The spirit was so strong it was like the room was on fire.  I was privy to redemption in all its phases that day.  Standing there, dripping wet, was the real Christmas spirit.  Nothing can top it ever.  For a man repented and forsook his sin and a woman covenanted with her God.  And in that very minute, they began a journey that would lead them back to their Father.  All because a babe was born in Bethlehem and grew to be the Saviour of Mankind and took upon himself the sins of all of us so that we can return to live with Him again.  Nothing is more important than that act.  Nothing.  It doesn't matter how big our sins, it only matters that we are trying to make it back.  And Christmas is the time that we celebrate the fact that He did indeed come to this earth.  It is a time that we can remember the sacrifice that Mary and Joseph made to become the parents of Jesus.  


So decorating the Christmas tree and hanging lights and standing in line to see Santa...I do that for my kids.  But Christmas to me, is in a font in Ivins Utah....