Stanley

 

This is without a doubt my favorite Christmas story and every year I share it with my classes I am teaching.  

When I was in first grade we had a class gift exchange.  The girls were in one group, the boys in another.  

Our price limit was fifty cents.  I don't remember what I brought to the gift exchange but I do remember wishing and hoping for a coveted book of lifesavers.  

Each student was to bring a gift in order to participate. 

When the day arrived I remember a boy I will call Stanley opening his gift and receiving a matchbox car.  His eyes lit up and shone with excitement as he quickly opened the car and raced it back and forth on his desk.  

I wouldn't understand for many years that the reason Stanley wolfed down his lunch each day was because he was hungry.  Or that the lack of consistent running water was the reason he didn't always smell pleasant or look clean.  His dad battled alcoholism and it was generally a losing battle.  But Stanley had the most pleasant giggle and smile you have ever seen and it stretched from ear to ear as he raced that car, which was probably one of his only gifts.

The gift opening continued until one boy became upset when the clumsily wrapped present he opened was just some empty cardboard boxes with numbers on them and a packet of hot cocoa.

"It's a game," said a dark haired boy named David.  "I made it myself." 

David lived with his mom, who for any number of possible reasons hadn't helped him procure a gift.  So he had taken it upon himself to fashion a gift to the best of his 7-year old ability. 

I loved my young teacher and I don't wish for this story to be a blight on her.  Yes, as a teacher I would provide extra gifts so that all can participate and I'm confident her life experience would have taught her this.   But at this moment she stated that the rules had been that in order to participate you had to  bring a real gift,  so David would need to take the boxes back and give his gift to the other boy.  

David fought back the tears as he crossed the room  to retrieve the box,  when suddenly a small voice spoke up.  

"I want the game." Stanley walked across the room, handed David  the matchbox car and picked up the boxes.  

1 John 4:12 reads "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."

Something inside my own 7-year old heart at that moment told me I had just witnessed something incredible.  While it would take years to truly understand, I knew I wanted to be like him.  

The boy who had nothing was the richest of us all.  

He had seen a need and loved another by sacrificing. 

He had shown us what Christmas was all about.