Christmas always arrives with a bang (gifts, sweets, cheer, and holiday prayers) and then quickly leaves us suffering from symptoms of straight-up withdrawal! And with children, it’s even more pronounced. “Every day should be like Christmas,” a little tyke imagines, leading to his demands of even more presents and more sugar– or else! Chaos inevitably erupts in the house and kid naughty summarily takes out kid nice in the first round. By New Year’s Day, parents are fed-up, broke, and ready for a break from the spoiled sugar addicts.
“Out with the old and in with the new” is the New Year’s motto. However, for youngsters, the “new” doesn’t mean “new toys” and “new treats.” Instead, January comes down like Thor’s hammer on the ungrateful young urchins. School reconvenes and reality sets in.
It was in January, the month after Christmas, that I had the first of many “great awakenings” about how things really are.
For weeks television ads had touted all the new toys available for Christmas. More than anything I wanted a Playmobile— one of the top toys for little boys that year. It was a plastic car console with horn, moving windshield wipers, a gear shifting stick, and working blinkers, made to sit nicely on a table top for playing. In my mind, it was the most incredible toy that had ever been invented. The Playmobile was the talk of the boys on the playground at school, and would certainly prove to bring hours of enjoyment to every kid who was fortunate enough to get one. And it WAS fun– for maybe a couple of weeks.
But by the middle of January, it became one of the most boring toys in the universe. All one could do was sit there and steer the car to NOWHERE. There was no gas pedal to rev-up the motor, no radio that blared music, and no wheels to take a person anywhere. It just sat there! It was more boring to a little boy than listening to a sermon in big church! And if (and when) the batteries wore down, it became a totally useless hunk of plastic.
But as it is with most kids, my vivid imagination came to my rescue. What could be more exciting, I thought, than a wreck? I could just pretend to run off the road and smash into a tree– or better yet, I could swerve back and forth on the highway, sideswipe a car, and then collide into an embankment! I rehearsed each crash scenario in my mind, upping the ante each 
time. Finally, my imagination led me to race down the side of a mountain, lose control, and then fly off the edge of a steep cliff and onto the rocky boulders at the ocean’s edge– just like like it was on the TV show, Route 66.
Obviously, my beautiful Playmobile could never survive such a terrible fate. That’s when I got the idea to do something really exciting. I raced to the storage room and pulled Dad’s hammer out of the tool box. For about five minutes I hammered my new Playmobile into oblivion, carefully placing each blow exactly where the car would have smashed against the sharp boulders at the bottom. It was incredible fun– truly it was– that is, until Dad showed up!
He had heard the commotion coming from my room and decided to check on his inventive son. I never heard him coming. With the hammer lifted high above my head I saw him enter my room, eyebrows raised and eyes bulging.
“Mark, what do you think you are doing! Are you crazy?”
“No Dad,” I responded as I lowered the hammer gently to my side. “I had a wreck.”
“A wreck, my hind leg! That was your Christmas present! Toys cost money! What were you thinking, Son?”
“It didn’t c0st anything. Santa brought it to me.” I was hoping he would just say, “Oh yeah Son, I forgot,” but I was badly mistaken.
“Well, who do you think paid Santa for it!!!” Dad was not reasoning with me, he was shouting at me. But I had never heard that Santa charged for his kindness to kids. Actually, that night, Santa Claus lost some of his charm in my eyes. Reality set in, especially after the spanking. Dad was never cruel to me– or anyone, for that matter– but he sure had a way of getting me in touch with reality. Ouch!
Just a few years ago, as my Dad was approaching the end of his days, we laughed and joked about the wreck of the old Playmobile. He remembered it as vividly as I did. “Son, I had to teach you a lesson that night, or else you might go though life thinking everything should be handed to you on a silver tray. But your mother and I laughed about it later. You really had a good imagination.”
I learned two things that night:
- Santa’s toys, like most things in life, are not free.
- Gifts should make us grateful, not just happy.
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding—
indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Proverbs 2:1-6
