Nancy Hill, in her book, Actual Factuals, tells an interesting story about a man who profited greatly because of a Christmas card. Clinton Odell heard of a chemist who had become ill and moved to Arizona for his health. The year was 1924. It was Christmastime, so Clinton sent the chemist $25 and an encouraging note. A year later, the chemist, Carl Noren, appeared at the Odell house saying, "I'm here and I'm well, and what can I do for you?"
Clinton had an idea he wanted Carl to work on. He felt there was a market for brushless shaving cream. So Carl started to work and eventually a new shaving cream was borna brushless shaving cream.
Now Clinton had to let the world know about their new product. His son, Allan, had noticed that some gas stations located on highways advertised gas, oil, and clean rest rooms with a series of signs. That was it! Clinton decided. Beginning with an advertising budget of $200, the family painted crude, unrhymed signs, hurrying to hammer them into the ground before it froze. And something quite encouraging happened. Orders started coming in from druggists whose customers traveled the two roads where the signs had been planted.
"The signs had several advantages: It took almost 18 seconds to read a series of them, which was more time than most advertisers could expect to get from their readers. Also, the separated signs created suspense because there was no way to ˜cheat' by slopping ahead to the ending. The signs also used humor, and rhyming was eventually added, which delighted readers. Some examples of these innovative signs are:
"The bearded lady
Tried a jar
She's now
A famous
Movie star
BurmaShave."
"Fisherman!
For a lucky strike
Show the pike
A face
They'll like
BurmaShave."
"If you dislike
Big traffic fines
Slow down
Till you
Can read these signs
BurmaShave." (1)
Now you know the origin of the quaint Burma Shave signs that once graced our nation's highways. And they were the result of one man's kindness at Christmastime.
Christmas is a surprising time, isn't it? It's a time when we might send a card to someone who is down on their luck. It's a time when we feel more charitable, more decent, more loving. Christmas at its best is a reflection of the love of God.
CHRISTMAS, JOHN TELLS US, WAS IN GOD'S PURPOSE FROM THE BEGINNING. "In the beginning was the Word," John says in his prologue, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." Later in John's prologue we learn that the Word that was with God in the beginning was Jesus. Christmas was God's purpose right from the very beginning.
When God said, "Let there be light," it was for the purpose of sharing His love. When He separated the earth from the waters, it was for the purpose of creating beings upon whom He could pour His beneficence.
What a wondrous thing is creation. Paul Davies in his book, God and the New Physics, notes that "had the big bang been weaker, the cosmos would have soon fallen back on itself in a big crunch. On the other hand, had it been stronger, the cosmic material would have dispersed so rapidly that galaxies would not have formed . . . If this balance had been off by 1 to a staggering 10 to the 60th power, we couldn't exist . . . Suppose," he says, "you wanted to fire a bullet at a oneinch target on the other side of the observable universe, 20 billion lightyears away. Your aim would have to be accurate to that same 1 to 10 to the 60th power."
What an amazing event Creation is. It is far more difficult to believe such an event happened by accident than to believe there was a Divine Mind, a Divine Purpose, behind it all. There was a Divine Purpose and that purpose was Christmas that God's perfect love would be revealed to humanity.
Love is the reason behind the universe. We find evidences of God's love throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, but it was the coming of Christ that brought the matter home. God had always loved us, but we never knew how much until the babe was born in Bethlehem. But there is a second thing we need to see;
CHRISTMAS IS THE VICTORY OF LIGHT OVER DARKNESS. We live in such a brilliantly lighted world that we cannot appreciate the imagery of a world of darkness. Imagine a world with no street lamps or lighted signs. Imagine further that you are a stranger traveling by foot or donkey. Do not assume that crime was not a problem in Jesus' time. It was a problem and the darkness held many terrors. Then into this world of darkness there shone a great light. John continues his prologue: "In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world." There is no more meaningful imagery in Scripture to describe what Christ's coming into the world meant than the imagery of light overcoming darkness.
Viktor Frankl, the father of Logo therapy, was interned by the Nazis for being a Jew. In his book, Man's Search For Meaning, Frankl tells how a distant light helped him through the darkness of his incarceration. The camp in which he was held was cruel and ugly beyond belief. He lived in a squalid dormitory. Nearby were the smokespewing crematoriums. And surrounding him were other human beings living in the most wretched of conditions. The apparent hopelessness of the situation took its toll on many, driving them to end their lives. But Frankl discovered that if you have a purpose for life, you can endure.
In the distance, there was a house surrounded by trees. Early in the morning on cold winter days, the glow emitting from that farmhouse served as a beacon of hope. Frankl envisioned a normal family gathered around the hearth. Deep in his heart he knew that the lights had not gone out in all the world and one day the present darkness would be overcome.
And that is Christ's promise to us. The present darkness will be overcome. Light has come into our world. That light is Christ himself.
In the "Metropolitan Diary" feature of the New York Times, a reader recalled an amusing incident that took place when he was working on one of TV's most popular "soap operas." A subway strike was in progress and the producers of the "soap" provided a bus to the studio. At one of the stops on the bus' schedule, an expected rider was nowhere to be seen. Then the driver noticed a man standing on the corner, looking uptown, then downtown, on tiptoe. The driver stopped, got out of the bus walked up to the man and said, "Are you looking for ˜The Guiding Light'?" The man's face glazed. "I have no time for fanatics," he said, then backed away and made a hasty retreat across Broadway. (2)
Well, Christ is our guiding light. In him we can see love that can transform the world. Christmas was God's purpose from the beginning. Christmas is the celebration of light coming into a dark and unfriendly world. But one thing more:
CHRISTMAS IS THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF THOSE WHO FOLLOW JESUS. John writes: "He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of Godchildren born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."
That is who we are. Because Christ has come into our world, we have become children of God. And as children of God, we are involved in the unfinished business of Christmas. We are those who carry the light into the dark places of the world. We are those who carry love into hostile and hurting places. We are the agents of the Peace of Christmas and the hope of Christmas and the joy of Christmas.
Singer Mel Torme tells about driving one excessively hot afternoon out to a songwriter's house in Toluca Lake for a work session. The San Fernando Valley, always at least ten degrees warmer than the rest of the town, blistered in the July sun. The song writer lived with his parents in a beautiful Colonialtype home, but even it was oppressive in those preairconditioned days. Mel opened the front door and walked in. (Before Charles Manson, he notes, some people left their front doors unlocked.) He called for his friend, the song writer. No answer. Mel walked over to the piano. A writing pad rested on the music board. Written in pencil on the open page were four lines of verse:
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos
When his friend finally appeared, Mel asked him about the little poem. His friend was dressed sensibly in tennis shorts and a white Tshirt, but he still looked uncomfortably warm.
"It was so . . . hot today," he said, "I thought I'd write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather."
Mel took another look at his handiwork. "You know," he said, "this just might make a song."
They sat down together at the piano, and, improbable though it may sound, "The Christmas Song" was completed about fortyfive minutes later. Excitedly, they sped into Hollywood, to play it for some wellknown people in the music businessincluding Nat King Cole, who fell in love with the tune. It took a full year for Nat to get into a studio to record it, but his record finally came out in the late fall of 1946; and the rest, as they say, is history. (3)
What if Mel hadn't come by that day? What if he hadn't noticed the poem scribbled on a pad? What if he hadn't helped his friend complete what he had started. The world would have been deprived of one of its favorite secular Christmas tunes. In the same way, we are those called to help Christ in his unfinished work.
The light has come into the world, John tells usthe light of peace, love and joy. But that was just the beginning. Each generation is charged with the responsibility for transmitting that light not only to the following generation but also of transmitting that light to everyone on earth so that darkness is finally driven out for all time. We are like those angels who sang over the Bethlehem stable, but the song is unfinished. Now we leave to sing Christ's tune to our dark world as well.
1. (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1997), pp. 2930.
2. Voicings
3. It Wasn't All Velvet (New York: Kensington Publishing Company, 1988), pp. 103104.