Christmas is the children's day of course. Everything we do is really planned for them. But during the last tumultuous days before the holidays, how many mothers and fathers of us get so intensely wrapped up in our plans that we neglect the children, give them absent minded answers, overlook playtime, and maybe in moments of exasperation, assure them that if they don't want a good Christmas all right, but we simply cannot get things done right if we are constantly bothered, and we are doing it all for them, etc. Bless you! They'd rather have no more Christmas than extra vegetables in the soup and be "in on" plans for fixing up the house and making gifts for others and have father and mother, good natured and interested and happy with them.
Giving the children a good Christmas may not consist in giving them a great display of elaborate toys. The best we can give them is to provide experiences that will develop them into good generous and self-reliant men and women. Giving, helping, learning to do things and to plan our experiences with which the most expensive gifts cannot compare.
Action is Important
Sometimes we get the idea that Things are important to a child. Just Things mean little to him. It is doing something with Things that is important. Did you ever stop to think how full your child's life is of exciting moments of victory and satisfaction just in every day living? This old world has become so common place to us that we forget how new it is to a child. Sonny had a set of blocks given to him this fall – the bright colored ones with which you make patterns or designs. Each cube has a red side, a white side, a blue side, and a yellow side, one side half white, and half red, one side half blue and half yellow. It is amazing the number of patterns that can be devised in the little set of 16 cubes. The lid of the box was covered with patterns and I'll never forget the glow of satisfaction on Sonny's plump, a little countenance, when we surveyed the first pattern that he managed to get right. He sat and admired it a long time, compared his design with his guide on the box, and it was perfect. He had copied it all alone, and he got it right and it was beautiful. And having done it once he had confidence he could do it again. And not only order the same design, but try a harder one, and when that was done right he could do another another. That little set of cubes provided him with hours of pleasure, and it was training his eye and hand at the same time, and teaching him accuracy and persistence. How much more enjoyment it him than would an electric train, which he would wind up and watch go round and round the same way always.
Wilbert has just learned to toss up the ball and bat it. It is so long ago that I first learned it that I have forgotten it took any training or skill to do it, but his joy and victory brought him as big as thrill as it did him.
Looked Easy
Some of the boys at school could do it and it looked easy! But time after time he would throw the ball into the air and before he could swing the bat, the ball would be on the ground. Then he would get the bat ready, but when he threw the ball, it went too high or too far to the side. At last almost by accident it seemed, he tossed the ball just right, and the bat came forward just as it should, and smack! The ball and bat met squarely. "Mother, I can do it! I can!" Then more practice, with more misses than hits, but with growing confidence that it was possible to develop certain skill in those muscles that would make you sure you could hit it every time. "Now come and watch me, mother!" Another miss and, crestfallen: "Well. I did do it. Now watch!" And soon a point was reached where ball and boy and bat worked in perfect precision almost every time. There was a real victory, a study in concentration and study and persistence.
Ruth began work on a pretty little piece. She wants to play for the club. First, she learned the right hand until the notes tripped up from her fingers like drops of water. Then she learned the left hand, with its rich full chords. Then she tried to play both together – and they didn't hitch. There was one place that went wrong every time. She was discouraged, almost to the point of tears. She was ready to give up music in entirely. "I'll try once more," she finally announced. Then some way, that time, the fingers fell into the right pattern, and the sound flowed forth as they should. "Mother," she cried in rapture. "I didn't know it was so pretty." She had been so occupied with the mechanical part that she had no chance to notice the rich full harmonies. But having heard them once she had patience to practice until she could hear them every time.
We Promoted
The boys were promoted to blue chambray shirts, and overalls "just like Daddy's" sometime ago, but last month, for the first time, they got four buckle arctics that were rubber all the way up, not cloth tops like little folks wear, but rubber just like Daddy's. It was amazing to see them pose before the mirror when they thought no one was looking, with overalls tucked into arctics with just the right bagginess, hands adjusted in pocket or in bib in imitation of Daddy and what we might call the typical American farmers "sports outfit". Boys are just as vain as girls, but instead of wanting to be beautiful, they want to look like someone they admire. Heaven grant they always choose as good model as they idolize now!
Ruth has always suffered the loneliness of the only daughter with no chum of her age. She has had to adjust herself all her life to folks either much older or much younger than herself. But now she is old enough to join the Lone Girl Scouts, and that brings her into fellowship with hundreds of other lonely girls. She has just received the handbook. She is ecstatic! Almost, one might say, consecrated! She knows the rules and regulations by heart. And she has become unnaturally polite, for courtesy is one of the first laws of the Girl Scouts. It is a momentous time in our life.
Duplicated Many Times
All these little incidents are simple in common place. They are duplicated in the lives of your own children. They show that just Things do not loom large in a child's life. The more closely we can keep in touch with these little experiences that seem big to them, the more sympathy we can give them, the closer we will be to them all their lives.
So when it comes to Christmas time, don't put too much emphasis on the gifts you give your children. Keep the pre-holiday season full and interesting but try not to crowd it with too many events. Take time to enjoy the season, even if you do not have so many handmade articles to display. Give them a generous wholesome Christmas dinner, but do not try so much to make it a big feed in and to serve it prettily. Let the children plan and help but keep back some surprise.
Plan A Ritual
Plan a little ritual for Christmas Day, that they can remember always. Tell them about it ahead of time so they will enter into the spirit of the program. Perhaps you will begin the day with simple Christmas carols. Perhaps it must be understood that every child will come downstairs and skip to the kitchen without taking the teeny peek into the living room on pain of I-don't-know-what. Five minutes to dress, 10 minutes to eat, and perhaps a dignified march into the living room, or perhaps a mad scramble when mother says "Go!" Maybe you will have a tree, maybe a gaily decorated box to hold the gifts, maybe a book for each child. Or maybe you will pile everyone's things at his place at the breakfast table. Maybe the oldest child will pass the things, maybe the youngest. Maybe Santa Claus will arrive in person. But whatever you do, whether you look on the gifts at Christmas Eve or on Christmas morning, make a pretty ceremony out of it that will color of the day for all time.
After Christmas dinner, be sure to have a quiet time in an outdoor time, a twilight supper and the pleasantest of talk, and get the children early to bed – Hope.
The "Golden Gateways of Three"
If you are attempted to reveal a tale to you someone else has told,
About another let it pass, before you speak, three gates of gold.
These narrow gates: first is it true?
Then is it needful? in your mind
Give truthful answer; and the next
Is last and closest: is it kind?
And if to reach your lips at last it passes through
These gateways three, then you may tell the tale
Nor fear what the results of speech may be