Happy Christmas Eve to all of you! I want to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday! Each of you touch my life and I am so grateful for all of you reading this. Thank you for being a part of my life and my life story as it unfolds each day I write. I hope each of you have all the wishes you wish for come true this Christmas. May Santa be good to all of you and may the Spirit of Christmas bring Joy to you and your loved ones.<\/p>\n
To celebrate Christmas Eve I thought I would share a true story about a moving holiday tradition that was chosen from thousands of entries as the most touching back in 1982.<\/p>\n
For the Man Who Hated Christmas \u00a0 -by Nancy W. Gavin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past ten years or so.<\/span><\/p>\n It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas\u2013oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it\u2013overspending\u2026 the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma\u2014the gifts given in desperation because you couldn\u2019t think of anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way.<\/span><\/p>\n Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended; and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church. These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes. As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler\u2019s ears.<\/span><\/p>\n It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford. Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn\u2019t acknowledge defeat.<\/span><\/p>\n Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, \u201cI wish just one of them could have won,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.\u201d Mike loved kids \u2013 all kids \u2013 and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse. That\u2019s when the idea for his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition\u2013one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.<\/span><\/p>\n As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn\u2019t end there.<\/span><\/p>\n You see, we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.<\/span><\/p>\n Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing to take down the envelope.<\/span><\/p>\n Mike\u2019s spirit, like the Christmas spirit will always be with us.<\/span><\/p>\n This true story was originally published in the December 14, 1982 issue of <\/em>Woman\u2019s Day<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>magazine. It was the first place winner out of thousands of entries in the magazine\u2019s \u201cMy Most Moving Holiday Tradition\u201d contest in which readers were asked to share their favorite holiday tradition and the story behind it. The story inspired a family from Atlanta, Georgia to start\u00a0The White Envelope Project<\/strong>\u00a0and Giving101, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating youth about the importance of giving.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n What a great story and what a great tradition! I love the way it spread to the children and I think it is an awesome tradition for all of us to implement in our own homes. It’s never too late to start a new tradition!<\/p>\n Merry Christmas Everyone! \u00a0I will post again on Sunday night for Monday morning. \u00a0Have an amazing holiday weekend!<\/p>\n ~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy Christmas Eve to all of you! I want to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday! Each of you touch my life and I am so grateful for all of you reading this. 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