Christmas Grace is set over several Christmas seasons and tells the tale of rival toy store owners, Gary (Ryan-Iver Klann) and Mr. Tollman (Tim Kaiser) who have very different approaches to their stores and their lives.
Gary walks the path of Christ and lives his life righteously, while Mr. Tollman lives his on a different path of avarice, greed and dishonesty.
But despite their different methodologies they still find God's grace hard at work in both their lives.
Twas the night before Christmas
And all thru the Mill
Nothing was stirring
As the great wheel was
still
Only the fire in the
hearth moved
As it kept away the
chill
During this narrative I will be answering the eternal question which is all pervading during the festive season namely does Santa Claus really exist?
Obviously the answer
we want is a resounding yes and so it will be.
Secondly I will be
exploding the popular myth that it was the Coca Cola Company who were
responsible for the red suited image of Santa.
St Nicholas is known by many different names around the world and he
undoubtedly a legend.
The legend began in the 4th century A.D. in what is now Demre in modern
Turkey.
Nicholas was a
Christian priest and was born in 280 A.D. in the Lycian city of Patara near the
ancient city of Myra where he later became Bishop.
Nicholas was the son
of a wealthy man and when he inherited his father’s wealth he traveled the land
helping the poor and sick and he was greatly admired for his piety and
kindness.
He became the subject
of many legends for example he was said
to have brought a dead child back to life and he once saved the life of a
prisoner by putting himself between the condemned man and his executioner also
he is said to have stopped a storm in order to save three sailors from
drowning.
But the most enduring and perhaps
the best known of the Nicholas legends was when he secretly left golden
dowries at the house of a poor man who was on the verge of selling his three
daughters into slavery or prostitution.
The dowries meant the
three poor sisters could be married.
This remarkable event
has led to a tradition we still celebrate to this day as the sisters had left there
stockings by the fire to dry and it was in the stocking where Nicholas placed
the gold.
Despite his many
secret late night visits to the homes of the poor and needy of the city he is
forever known as the gift giver of Myra.
In the year 303 A.D.,
Diocletian the Roman emperor commanded all citizens of the Roman Empire to
worship him as a god.
Nicholas and his
fellow Christians believed in but one god and in all conscience could not obey
the Emperor.
In his Anger
Diocletian threatened the Christians with imprisonment if they did not comply.
Many Christians
including Nicholas defied The Emperor and were imprisoned.
Nicholas was confined
to a small cell for almost ten years and suffered greatly but never wavered in
his beliefs.
It was In 313, when
Constantine replaced Diocletian to become the first Christian Emperor and
Constantine’s first act was the release of the Christians and upon his release
Nicholas returned to his post as Bishop of Myra where he continued his good
works until his death on December 6, 343.
On his death he was
sainted to become St Nicholas the patron saint of Children and sailors.
When celebrating
The festive interval
Please refrain from
calling it
The winterval
Santa’s firstborn
daughter Rudolfa (Mary Donnelly-Haskell), who has been waiting in the wings to
succeed him for centuries, secretly begins selling off pieces of the North Pole
on the internet, and convinces Santa (Douglas Campbell) that his tenure is over
and it’s time for him and Mrs. Claus (Rebecca Toolan) to retire.
Her plan is to
eventually take over after she has ruined Christmas, and replace Santa's
workshop and the village with a brand new casino.
It takes Santa’s other
daughter Kristin Claus (Kathy Ireland) to save the North Pole with her two
children Kyle (James Kirk) and Brittany (Kirsten Prout) and her fiancé Bill
Morgan (John Dye).
Twas the night before Christmas
And alone in the Croft
The owner banged his
head and cussed
As he did all too oft
The Ronettes where playing on the radio, It was Christmas morning.
The children were
rushing about like they’d had a caffeine injection; excitedly showing off there
new toys while my wife was wrestling a turkey into the oven.
As I sat in my arm
chair sipping my coffee my mind drifted back to the previous week.
The wipers swished
rhythmically as they cleared the lightly beating sleet that was spattering the
windscreen and the heater struggled to demist the inside.
All this was of no
consequence as the car wasn’t actually moving.
It was the last Friday
before Christmas and I was sat in a jam in the evening rush hour.
Half an hour I‘d been
stuck in it and I was still only half a mile from where I worked.
I had time to take in
the colourful and sometimes overly extravagant festive decoration on the houses
which contrasted sharply with the meagre and tired looking display put on by
the local council.
After another half an
hour I reached the main road.
Nothing to see here through
the wet steamy windows except the red tail lights of other frustrated drivers.
Twenty minutes after
that accompanied by some over cheerful DJ on the radio I could see the
roundabout.
The sleety rain was
falling harder now and it was difficult to see through the murkiness.
After crawling to the
roundabout I could just make out a flashing blue light which I suspected had
nothing to do with Christmas.
As I got closer I
could see it was attached to a police car which was blocking my exit.
Without any explanation
the police had closed the road.
So I was faced with a
choice, go back the way I came or take the exit off the roundabout which would
take me in the opposite direction from where I lived.
I did the latter.
By the time I
eventually arrived home I was in a black mood.
I shouted at the kids,
moaned at my wife and tried to kick the cat.
My mood was not
improved when my half cremated dinner was removed from the oven and what had
once been gravy was now only a stain on the plate.
The weekend was spent
doing all the pre Christmas stuff with the family and all too soon it was over.
When I returned to
work on Monday I related my tale of woe to my workmate’s and we all had a big
laugh about it.
Except for Harry, who
lived locally, he just looked down at the ground grave faced.
Later, when we were
alone, he told me the road was closed because a young woman had been knocked
down and killed.
I was dumbstruck, I
had no words just a feeling of shame at my selfishness.
A week before
Christmas, she had died.
While I was cursing at
being inconvenienced, ranting at being stuck in a jam.
A poor young woman lay
dead in the rain soaked street.
Somebody’s wife and
lover, also a daughter and mother and she was mourned by two children, a sister
and a brother.
The sound of church
Bells ringing out brought me back to Christmas morning and my family.
But I still couldn’t
help thinking of other families for whom Christmas morning would be less
joyous.
With the bells still
ringing out I gave thanks for being alive.
Also I vowed to be
more patient, more tolerant and more understanding in the future.
But I probably won’t
keep it.
