A Christmas That Won’t Disappoint Series

All right. Good morning. Did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas? Any surprises? I read an article a while back in which various celebrities were asked to name their most memorable Christmas presents, and the answers might surprise you. These were A-list celebrities; people with money and fame; people who can buy pretty much anything they want.

• Catherine Zeta-Jones, for example. An Academy Award-winning actress and movie star. To put this in perspective, when she and her husband, Michael Douglas, were married, he gave her an engagement ring worth about three million dollars. A ten-carat diamond. I imagine she’s received some pretty expensive and exotic gifts over the years. So what do you think her most memorable Christmas present was? A pair of white roller skates that she got when she was nine years old.

• Another movie star quoted in the article, George Clooney, said this: "I remember a bicycle when I was like 10 that was about the greatest thing I ever saw in my life. It took my breath away. When you’re a kid, coming down and underneath the tree there’s a bike . . . " Now, George Clooney and his wife Amal own a villa on Lake Como in Italy that was constructed in the 18th century. It is worth over $100 million dollars. A few years ago, he sold his Tequila company, Casamigos, for over a billion dollars. But the most memorable Christmas present he ever received was a bicycle when he was ten years old.

Perhaps in the month of December you saw some commercials for luxury cars. They usually go something like this: It’s Christmas morning. The man hands his wife the keys to a new car. She hesitates for a moment, wondering if it could really be true, then she runs to open the door, and there it is, sitting in the driveway! A new Mercedes, with a big red bow on top! She’s thrilled beyond words! Now, I ask you, what percentage of the men who watch ESPN or the CBS Evening News, and who see the commercials, can afford to buy their wives an $80 thousand dollar car for Christmas? They might as well be advertising a Learjet as a Christmas present, or a helicopter, or a yacht. Or maybe a small island in the South Pacific. What are these advertisers thinking?

Well, what they’re probably thinking is that we all want to be like the people in the commercial – wealthy, and attractive, and happy. And young, too—the people in the commercials are always young. And the advertisers are hoping that in order to pursue that fantasy, a lot of people will be willing to load up on debt. But the ironic thing is that the people who really can afford to buy a Mercedes as a Christmas present – or a jet, or a helicopter, or a yacht, or an island – when those folks think about the best gift they ever received, it isn’t a ten-carat diamond. It’s a pair of skates or a bicycle. It’s probably the same with you. The most memorable gift you ever received probably wasn’t the most expensive. It might have been an electric train, or a dollhouse, or a chemistry set. Or a BB gun; maybe even a "Red Ryder Carbine Action Two-Hundred Shot Lightning Loader Range Model Air Rifle," like Ralphie wanted in "A Christmas Story". If so, I hope you didn’t shoot your eye out. But for most of us, nothing will ever compare to the presents we received as children. As Catherine Zeta-Jones and George Clooney, and countless others have learned, nothing money can buy will ever match the joy, and wonder, and excitement of a child, coming down the stairs and seeing, sitting under the tree, the one thing they wanted most in the whole world.

Now, why is it that, as we grow older, we lose that ability to rejoice over a gift, like a child does at Christmas? I think one reason is that, as we grow up, we learn a hard truth about gifts. Which is that they break. They get old and wear out. They fail to live up to their promise. As the years pass, we find, over and over again, that the things we hoped for and sought after—the treasures we acquired and the goals we achieved—they don’t really do for us what we thought they would. They don’t satisfy the deep longings of our heart. They may give us a great deal of pleasure. And for a time, they may be everything we hoped for. But eventually, the appeal fades. The joy dissipates. We outgrow the bike. We finish all the experiments in the Science Kit. We get tired of practicing the guitar. We lose interest in building model airplanes. And we’re on to the next thing. But each time, we’re a little less hopeful and a little less excited than we were before. The sense of anticipation isn’t quite as keen. Because in our heart of hearts, we know that our new interest won’t be enough to make us happy. Even if we get exactly what we thought we wanted, eventually we’ll be disappointed. And so even a new car becomes just a means of transportation, a machine that has to be washed, and filled with gas, and taken to the dealer for maintenance. An obligation that we have to make monthly payments on, and buy insurance for. We may like the car very much. But it’s lost its ability to thrill us; it no longer has the capacity to fill us with joy. It’s not the "stuff that dreams are made of". It’s just a car.