Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

Christmas gifts we know about in advance are sometimes the best

Sometimes, the best gifts we can receive at Christmas are those that we know about in advance.

As a father, I’ve enjoyed seeing my sons be surprised when they open an unexpected gift on Christmas morning.

I get a lot of satisfaction also from seeing my wife Cindy look through the photo album that I give her each year at Christmas.

For some 20 years now, I’ve had prints made of 30 to 40 family photos taken since the previous Christmas. I put them in an album, complete with information on each photo written on their backs and next to the photo in the album itself.

Cindy always says it’s the best gift she gets each Christmas. She loves to sit down and look at all the photos, marveling as she relives moments in the life of our family from the previous year.

And just as some gifts we know about in advance are the best, some gifts also grow in value over time.

The family photo album that I give to Cindy each year is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving. They boys themselves like looking at the albums to see photos of themselves when they or their brothers were younger.

Viewing albums from several years ago often brings Cindy to tears as she takes in just how much our family has changed in what seems like so short a time.

In our life of faith as Catholics, we learn from a young age the great gift we received at Christ’s birth in Bethlehem when he gave himself to us. So, we’re not surprised or astounded by it like the shepherds or the magi were at the first Christmas.

We don’t need that experience to know the greatness of the gift we receive in Christ’s birth.

But perhaps its value can grow in us through time as our relationship with him grows, like the way Cindy cherishes more as the years go by the family photo albums I give to her each Christmas.

This can happen in a special way as we open ourselves to the reality that the gift Christ gives us in his birth comes to full flower in the Eucharist.

At Christmas, we are simply witnesses of his birth in the Spirit. In the Eucharist, Christ not only gives us himself. He goes further, drawing us into himself in holy Communion.

It’s then that we can become like another kind of Christmas gift that parents value greatly.

Children often want to give Christmas gifts to their parents and do so by making some kind of gift on their own. My boys, for example, have given Cindy and me at Christmas simple art projects they’ve worked on in school.

By themselves, these gifts are of no great objective value. But to us as parents, their worth is inestimable. We see, touch and feel in them the great love our children have for us.

So, when Christ empowers us in the Eucharist to give ourselves in him to our heavenly Father, we become a child’s Christmas gift to his or her parents.

We may not have much from our daily lives to offer up to our him, especially with all of the faults and failings that mark our lives.

But when they are given to him in communion with his Son in the Eucharist, their worth becomes infinite.

This Christmas, open your hearts to the great gift in Christ’s birth and the Eucharist that you know in advance you’ll receive. And, in Christ in the Eucharist, give yourself as the best of Christmas gifts to our heavenly Father. †