Our Family's Christmas Miracle Circa 1968

For our Tri-Stake Creche Festival held earlier this month, I was asked to write an "Ensign Quality" article about having Christ-Centered Christmas Traditions. I don't have many traditions of my own, so I opted to share a story from my childhood where I felt the true spirit of Christmas. I don't know about it being "Ensign Quality," but this is what I wrote:

Our Christmas Miracle

By Joan Stott

Christmas is unlike any other holiday and is celebrated differently by families throughout the world. Family traditions can help make this celebration even richer and more meaningful. People of all ages love Christmas but unfortunately, the focus is often more on receiving gifts than celebrating the greatest gift the world has ever been given – the birth of Jesus Christ. One year, as a teenager, I learned by experience what the true spirit of Christmas is and what I had been missing.

During the fall of 1968, our bishop called my parents into his office to ask if they would be willing to pledge some money to aid in the building of the Provo Utah Temple. Bishops no longer do that today, but it was a common practice back then for the members of the Church who lived in a given temple district to be asked to donate funds to what would become “their” temple. My dad pledged $1,000 for the building of the temple. That might not seem like a lot of money to many, but for our family that seemed an impossible amount. We were poor. My father was working two jobs in order to support a son in college, a son on a mission, and five children still at home.

When my father sat us down for family council and told us that he had pledged $1,000 for the building of the temple, I remember thinking “you might as well have pledge $1 million since both amounts are unreachable.” I couldn't believe he had pledged that much, and we had less than 4 months to gather the funds. He asked what we would do to help reach that goal as a family. After some brain storming, we decided on three ways to help: 1) we would all forfeit our Christmas that year and donate any money we would have spent on Christmas gifts; 2) my three sisters and I would donate any babysitting money we earned; and 3) as a family we would go to a local apple farm and pick apples every day after school for a few weeks and donate all earnings.

Finding an old shoe box, we kids cut a slit in the top for the monetary deposits, gift wrapped it, added a picture of a temple and a picture of Christ, then placed it on a small table in our living room. The excitement was starting to build. By forfeiting our Christmas gifts and donating all our earnings to the temple, our focus switched from the gifts we wanted to receive for Christmas to the gift we would be giving Christ for Christmas. I so appreciated the gift he had given all mankind, even that of His own life, that I wanted to give something back to Him.

Picking apples turned out to be the hardest, but most rewarding way of earning money. Hard, because apples get very heavy and it was physically draining; rewarding, because as we worked together, we were strengthened as a family. Talking, singing, and joke telling not only helped to make the time pass more quickly, but helped knit us together in unity and love.

As time passed, I would secretly peek into the donation box to see where we stood. I always walked away disappointed. In spite of all our efforts, we were well short of reaching our goal.

Christmas was approaching and so was the deadline. I felt very good about our decision to forfeit our Christmas gifts and I felt a closeness to Christ that I had never felt before. I knew that the sacrifices we made were small but I had faith that Christ would be pleased with our gift.

One day my dad announced that we had reached our goal and the money had been donated. Somehow, dad must have accrued the remaining amount because I know there wasn't $1,000 in the box. Where he got the money I will never know. The fulfillment of dad’s pledge was one of the miracles that Christmas, but the real miracle for me was that through giving instead of receiving, my closeness to Christ grew. That was better than any Christmas gift I could have received. Ironically, seven years later the gift was returned to me as I knelt across the altar in that very temple to be sealed for time and all eternity to the love of my life.