My favorite of dear friends on whom I have great favor,

Not many things compare to the sight of children rushing to the Christmas tree on that grand morning. The happenings and clatter of the Advent season reach a crescendo in that moment. Eyes aglow, hearts pattering, voices peaking with excitement, it’s an unforgettable site for the parent who loves. Meeting Tom Fitzmorris for the first time or getting an empty seat on the St. Charles streetcar for the entirety of your trip may be the only comparable events. Perhaps stout choosing you as his teammate in a 2 v. 2 streetball tournament -- think Sidney and Billy -- might also. Or maybe getting to watch a film with iwyLSUiwy, although OMLandshark might be waiting in the background with a can of paint or heated door handle.

Christmas trees have been an element of the Christmas celebration since Reformation times. The legend goes that Martin Luther was walking through a German forest when he was suddenly struck, as one poster recently wrote, “admiring the beauty of the day, when an overwhelming sense of gratitude came over me.” Luther wanted to turn this gratitude into a sign, so he brought a tree home with him to share with his children the beauty of nature. In America, it was the Dutch of Pennsylvania, showing their Germanic roots, who introduced the tree to this continent in the 1820s. By the 1850s trees were found throughout the States, even in New Orleans.

For many New Orleans families, the tradition was buying a fresh tree at a local lot on Veterans, which, before the post-Katrina boom, was a haven for Christmas tree lots. The more adventurous traveled to far-away places on the Northshore and Hammond area to cut down their own trees. I presume some still do. I and my folk have upset many and perhaps have gone the poor route and started using artificial trees. What I once I chided others for I now embrace as for simplicity’s and affordability’s sakes.

For most of Christianity’s history, gift giving at Christmas did not happen. The Anglicans of England began in the 1600s the tradition of Christmas gift giving. The Puritans rejected gift giving as a symbol of excess and outward display of wealth. The first American assumed this Puritanical position. It wasn’t until the German Moravians arrived in, ironically, Bethlehem, PA, that we find the first evidence of Christmas gifting in America. Fruit, apples and oranges, and clothing were typical gifts in the first two centuries of American Christmases. In the South, slave owners sometimes gave humans shackled against their wills little trinkets, likely patting themselves on the back as though they had done an act of kindness.

As Christmas trees became common in the States in the 1830s, not long after the modern Santa was born, the tradition of sharing gifts followed. Canal Street became one of the great shopping districts in America, largely due to this new Christmas tradition. By 1840, no other holiday in America was noted for gifts except Christmas. Christians saw the gifts as an outward symbol for generosity and a reminder of the gift of God’s Son at Christmas. The merchant class saw Christmas as a way to boost the economy.As the decades rolled forward, gifting would gradually secularize and commercialize the great holiday.

INTERLUDE: We Three Kings of Orient Are

Each of us here likely remembers one special gift at Christmas time. There is a fabulous thread on the OT currently discussing what is your favorite gift of all-time. It’s such a tough question. Haven’t we received at Christmas so many wonderful gifts? From that Optimus Prime toy as an eight year old to the PlayStation 3 as a teen to a new grill as an adult, your loved ones may have blessed you with material acts of kindness and generosity. Many remember the ritual of devouring a Sears or Service Merchandise calendar, taking notes and highlighting the things we wanted most. Gifts, for some, are as much a part of Christmas as prayer, worship, baking, and caroling.

Of course the act of giving is rooted in the fact that Christmas represents the special time when God sent God’s Son to us as the Christ child in the manger at Bethlehem. And just as the magi brought Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh we might bring to Christ our finest gift -- our lives -- to be used for love and service to this world. Why did the magi bring those three gifts? I do not know. Some have suggested a medicinal reason -- two of the three were helpful for arthritis. But why would a newborn need arthritis medicine? I digress. By the way, what year is it? I just read Vince Carter is still playing in the NBA.

I want now to share with you my favorite ten gifts I have received at Christmas. Just as going through and discovering your favorite ten Christmas carols or Christmas desserts or Christmas ornaments is important to appreciating this season, so too is going through in your mind and memory the hundreds of gifts you’ve so graciously received. Remember receiving them. Remember the gifter. Remember the stories. It is in remembering that our lives make sense and we can appreciate the symmetry and plan of our lives. Without this reflection, life can feel and appear as random as peej or the frosty moderator who anchors a thread.

10. Rubik’s Cube

If you were born in the 1980s or after, you might assume the Rubik’s cube has existed forever. But it didn’t exist until 1974 when the Hungarian Emo Rubik released what would become the best selling toy of all-time. It was the last Friday of class before Christmas of 1994 when the former girl of my dreams, Ashley, surprised me with this one. I spent the rest of Christmas break trying to solve it. That would impress her! I know there are simple guides and YouTube videos that will teach me how to do it, but I want to do this on my own. 25 years later and I’m still trying. As it turns out, and I only found this out the first day of school after New Year’s, Ashley had given a cube to everyone in the class. So I wasn’t special. It was a humiliating moment when she told me this after I handed her a wrapped gift of Elmer’s chocolate.

9. St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica

If you haven’t read this masterpiece of logic and theology, I commend it to you for reading as soon as is humanly possible. Mother thought the Platonism of my mid-teen years was endangering me and I was becoming too much of a dreamer and idealist. She gave me this set to ground me a little and remind me of the importance of categorizing and the need for logically moving from one step to the next. I’m forever grateful. While I would never classify myself as an Aristotilean or a Thomist, my thought process would be quite demented and deficient without this book(s).

8. Voltron

I didn’t know what Voltron was before Uncle gave me this when I was five. It came with four other tigers or lions, but this is the only one I have, as some were lost in a home invasion. It used to transform into a big human like thing, which was pretty neat. Classmates who were allowed over said it was the only fun toy I had. I agree -- it was a lot of fun and from time to time it’s still a lot of fun.

This post was edited on 12/12/19 at 7:12 am