Topic: What A Shame!

I like the Christmas season. I hate eggnog, the word "Yuletide" and that guilty feeling I get when I ignore Salvation Army bell ringers, but overall I'd have to say that the impact of Christmas is good. After all, anything that little kids stay up dreaming about is good. Anything that makes adults sing and tell each other to be merry is, if not miraculous, at least good. And anything that releases our inhibitions to the point where we can feel comfortable sitting around a dead tree, eating things out of socks, is, in a weird sort of way, kind of good.

I also think birthdays are good. I hate age jokes, card prices and forgetting about my mom's birthday, but if it came to a vote, I'd still have to say they're good. After all, anything that makes adults sing and tell each other to be happy is, if not miraculous, at least good. And anything that releases our inhibitions to the point where we can feel comfortable sitting around a flaming pastry in pointed hats is, in a weird kind of way, good.

Just about everyone would agree with those two stances. It's the combination of the two that never seemed quite right. More than once as a child I developed a silent moment of sympathy for those poor souls who had the ultimate misfortune of being born on Christmas. I cringed at the thought of being cheated out of presents and thanked the Lord for blessing me with a normal birthday. Luckily, I had been taught that Christmas wasn't really Jesus' birthday or I would have been faced with the unanswerable question of why God would gyp himself out of presents. Kind of like, "Could God create a rock he couldn't pick up," only worse! I guess those questions still trouble people, but for me at least, in those younger years, the Christmas/birthday dilemma was settled, not by a Sunday school teacher or a preacher or even an article like this, but by my next door neighbor, Donny Parker. Donny was the best friend a nine year old could have. We did everything together. We played war together and spent the night at each other's house every weekend. We were "blood brothers." We hated girls and we stuck up for each other when someone called me fat or him four-eyes. We even had a secret handshake -- a true friendship.

One December afternoon, as we played in a snow bank, Donny had a question. We had been talking about Christmas, the number one December Topic for nine year olds, when he said something like: "Mark, you go to church and stuff, and I was just wondering -- is Christmas really Jesus' birthday?" I confess now that I rarely, if ever, knew the answers to any of Don's questions. Usually I would just act like I knew and he would believe me, but this time it was different…this time I actually knew the answer. This was my chance to evangelize, to tell Donny that Jesus was more than just a prefix for various swearwords. "NO, NO, NO!" I blurted out, scorning Don for his blatant ignorance. "It's not his birthday, and don't let anyone tell you any different. No one knows when his birthday is!" Don sat there for a while almost embarrassed that he had even asked. He knew better than to argue theological issues with a guy who went to church on Wednesday nights, but under his breath he mumbled, "If nobody knew when my birthday was, I wouldn't mind if they just picked a day." I didn't think about it then, or for years to come, but eventually I realized the wisdom in what Donny mumbled that day in the snow bank. Donny, who had never been to church a day in his life, saw a smiling Jesus who said, "Go ahead, just pick a day," and I saw an angry Jesus screaming, "No, it's not my birthday!"

Do we really think he cringes like the Grinch when we sing about mangers? When he hears songs about Bethlehem and wise men does he pull out his hair and yell, "It never says three! It never says three!" I doubt it. Sixteen years later I wonder if Don remembers what I told him. I hope not, because he now has a four year old who might ask him the same question someday. What a shame if that's all he remembers about his friend who went to church three times a week. (Mark Moore)

Article Author: Jean Seligmann
Typist Or Article Provider: Roddy Chestnut

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