'Tis the Season

‘Tis the season for God to show his children love; it’s also the occasion for us to show one another love. It’s a beautiful thing for people to publicly express love to their loved ones, however they do it. Giving gifts during the Christmas season is a form of PDA that isn’t tawdry.

People with great means give greater gifts than the ones who have fewer resources. I enjoy watching the commercial of a guy who got a Big Wheel when he was a boy and considered it great until years later his wife gave him a Lexus. I enjoy watching the photo session in the morning when the couple are in the PJ’s, walking around the car and taking pictures. Isn’t it a thing of beauty that brings us the kind of joy that has the resonance of eternity?

We should not envy the guy that got a Lexus; what ought to cause us envy is that his wife, or girl friend, loved him so much that she exhausted her means to buy him the best possible gift to express the depth of her love for him. That was indeed a good and beautiful thing.

In our household Kathy is the one who makes everyone’s Christmas. What is lacking in quality she tries to make it up in quantity in her gift purchasing for her four men. Our boys are grown yet they don’t seem to have grown out of their yearning for good gifts during Christmas. We are people of little means but we are pretty resourceful in showing love to one another. Kathy started gathering gifts for this Christmas well over a month ago and has visited “Dollar Tree” many times to increase the volume of gifts under the shiny tree. We started opening the gifts at about nine and didn’t end until three in the afternoon. Rob the “mailman” did a good job and prolonged the joy of our gift-opening until we were a little exhausted.

I put away the gifts that I received in a drawer and some of them may stay there for a long time, but I will have great difficulty shelving away the love that I have received from my loved ones, for I will need that when times are hard and my days become a little dreary during the coming year.


The cardigan that I ordered for Kathy was about a size too big and the jumper that she asked for turned out to be a size too small, and the poem I tried to write for her was only half-done, but all was forgiven. A Chinese man was giving his friend a goose, but it got away on the way there and he only had a feather to show for it when he got to his friend’s house, but his friend comforted him by saying: “You traveled many mile to delivered this goose feather; the gift is light, but your love for me is very heavy.” (千里送鵝毛, 禮輕情意重) I guess my love for my wife was weighty enough for her not to mock my awkwardness in gift-giving.