IT LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE A DUSTPAN!

Christmas time was always a fun and special time in our home as we celebrated Christ's birthday and exchanged gifts. We always had a tree, but it wasn't much to "brag" about. The girls never wanted me to buy an artificial tree, so we would go and pick one out from a lot full of trees. They were way up in Junior High before we went for the artificial tree.

I always was really busy during this time of the year as I tried to bake, sew, and keep up with all the shopping one has to do extra.

My husband would take the girls out shopping and have the girls pick out a gift from them to me. Now this was not a big gift, but something that I could use during the year. One year they chose a dust pan for the gift. I was in need of a new one.

Our younger daughter was so very excited about this gift and put it under the tree. She just turned 3 years old. She came to me and said that she wasn't going to tell me what it was she had bought, BUT she would give me a "LITTLE HINT". She told me, "It looks something like a dustpan!"

Of course, I didn't let her know that she let the "Cat out of the Bag" telling me that. I went along with the surprise and tried to guess what it was. It was a memory that is so precious that time can't erase it. It is those little things that are so precious as one looks back on events.

Most years they got a new doll and I tried to sew a wardrobe of clothes that those dolls would wear. It would be right up to Christmas before I had all the snaps, buttons, etc sewed on. I think my mother would come down and help finish those little details. Of course, they got a lot more things but not as much as kids get these days.

Wisdom--Keep Christ as the center of Christmas. This holiday has become so commercialized that Christ is not the forefront but way, way back almost out of the picture. How Sad! How would you like to have a birthday, and people shoved you out of the picture altogether!