Well Christmas day is near and little children around the world will find it hard to sleep tonight. After staying up late to assemble the tricycles, bicycles and other cycles, their parents will feel like sleeping late on Christmas morning but too bad, the kids will be up before the sun. They'll rush to the tree to find their precious gifts.

When I was a child we didn't get many presents at Christmas time and maybe I was lucky because my gifts were always a real treasure.

One year when I was in the third grade my sister, Lois and I got bicycles. They were beautiful, but they weren't new. We didn't have much money so my Dad bought second hand bikes and restored them. My father was a perfectionist, he carefully and painstakingly removed the old paint and refinished them. On Christmas morning those bicycles were better than new. They shone brightly with the love and care that my Dad had put into them.

I remember my Grandma and Grandpa Miller coming to California at Christmas. They gave me a big doll and I mothered it for countless hours. Grandma and Grandpa Wilson sent us gifts too, but I can't say I was grateful for the homemade cotton petticoat Grandma made. I liked Grandpa Wilson's gift, a delicious red and white peppermint stick, probably about an inch around. That started me off on a love for candy canes since I haven't seen any of those red and white peppermint sticks for at least 55 years.

As a teenager two Christmas gifts stand out in my mind more than others. The first was the year I was a sophomore in La Junta High School and was working during the Christmas season at a local drug store. In that day drugstores were exciting places. I worked behind the soda fountain and there were lots of boys around. The drugstore was decorated with tinsel and boys, bright lights and boys, beautifully wrapped packages and boys, Christmas trees and boys, candy canes and boys, stockings and boys. I was so enthused over those boys I got carried away one day and made dates with two guys on the same night. I can't remember how I got myself out of THAT mess.

I enjoyed working in that Christmas atmosphere and it was topped off when the drugstore gave us gifts. I've never worked at a job where a souvenir meant as much as that one did. When I opened that elegant box I found a lovely pink mirror, brush and comb set. I kept that enchanting set until it was old with age.

The other gift that I remember was a special present from my Father. I was a junior in High School and was living with my sister and brother-in-law, going to school in Iowa. My sister, her two-year-old boy, Jimmy, and I took the train to La Junta. That was the year my favorite teacher, Miss Foster, introduced us to poetry. I fell in love with poetry and spent hours writing poems.

My Dad wasn't a shopper, our gifts were usually bought by my mother, but that year he went to town on the day before Christmas and bought me a gift I treasured for years. I was touched and excited when I took off the Christmas wrappings to find a splendid book of poetry written by Edgar A. Guest. I treasured that book and read it over and over. How I adored his poetry, but somehow over the years it was lost. I grieved over the loss and I've never found another book by Edgar A. Guest to replace it. It wouldn't be the same anyway because that was a rare gift from my beloved Father.

Although all the gifts throughout my life were precious to me there was one rare gift that I received that was by far the most valuable present in the world. That was the gift from my beloved Heavenly Father, the gift of His only Son. Instead of being packaged in expensive covering and living in a golden palace God's Son came to earth as the little baby Jesus. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger. The greatest gift to all mankind was born in a lonely cave in Bethlehem, among the animals. The first visitors were poor Shepherds who had seen angels in the Heavens. That gift shone brightly with the love and care that God has for me. I'll never lose that wonderful gift.