Over the next several days, Christian leaders will be sharing favorite Christmas memories with readers. Today we hear from retired Christian educator Dan Schantz.
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By Dan Schantz
When I was a boy, my mother went shopping on Fridays, and she always brought home something for us kids, such as a comic book or some Cracker Jacks. But the last week of August she would bring home “The Holy Grail of Christmas”—the Sears Roebuck catalog.
This catalog was the bible of toys for little boys, a kind of Amazon and Lego World combined into one glorious, 600-page book that was nicknamed “The Wish Book.” It was as thick as a brick and weighed as much as a sack of flour. The smooth, satiny pages had a subtle but heavenly fragrance from the ink.
I was always first to claim the book, and soon I was lost in a fantasy world of toys. We kids were supposed to put our initials by our top three Christmas wishes, but it was hard to stop at three because nearly everything in the catalog pushed my buttons.
I sat on the floor and checked my top three choices: a Lionel electric train, a Red Ryder BB gun, and a cowboy hat, and I greedily checked about 40 other items.
At last, exhausted, I lay back on the floor to rest my eyes. I thought about all the toys I hoped to get, and my heart was restless with excitement. But then I remembered that the previous Christmas I got tired of my toys in just a few weeks, and some of them were soon broken.
I looked around the room and suddenly I realized that everything I needed to be happy was right here, starting with my parents. My mother was my greatest fan. When she watched me playing with my electric train and asked questions, that was more inspiring to me than an audience of thousands.
Then I looked at my father, who was a “Minister of the Gospel,” which I knew was the most important work in the world. He knew his Bible better than I knew the Sears catalog. The Bible was his “Wish Book.” To me, however, he was just “Daddy,” and my best friend. He, too, loved electric trains, and we sometimes fought over the controls.
Finally, I thought about my brothers and sisters: Tommy and Bobby, Mark and Gloria, and Linda Joy. Without them, Christmas would be a very lonely time.
I handed the Sears catalog to my brother, Tommy, and said, “It’s all yours.”
Like my father, I am, today, a Minister of Gospel, and I cherish the same Wish Book he did.
My parents are gone, now, and my siblings live far away, but it has been said that “Nothing is ever lost, as long as you can remember it.”
No matter where I am or what I am doing at Christmas, I am always “home” for Christmas in my heart.
Daniel Schantz is a professor emeritus of Central Christian College of the Bible, Moberly, Mo.
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