The Christmas Pocketknife

Virgin Utah – a couple of days after Christmas, 1953. Many people who lived in Virgin in 1953 were, by any standard, poverty stricken. They had little money, grew gardens for food, and struggled every day to keep their families fed and a roof over their heads. Outhouses were the norm, and running water might have been a well if you were lucky, if not it was the Virgin River. Christmas was not the same to them as it is to us.

I don’t remember much about their circumstances in general, and I don’t think I really had any idea how little some of them had until this 1953 Christmas. I had a friend in Virgin about my age. I don’t remember his name, but I do remember that his clothes were threadbare, and he was always cold when we were outside. Yet he was happy, and we had a lot of fun together roaming the town and the hills.

On this Christmas day, I greeted him with excitement, and wanted to tell him about my Christmas – this was the year that I got the BB gun and a silver dollar from my grandmother Call, among other things. But for some reason, I did something that I usually did not do at that age. I asked him what he got for Christmas before I told him about my bounty. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife – a very inexpensive pocketknife. He was very proud of it. I didn’t tell him what I got for Christmas. I think I said something like: “Just some stuff.” I knew he had never seen a silver dollar, let alone a real BB gun. I’m sure that the pocketknife was a sacrifice for his parents.

This is a simple, small memory of someone who had little of the things of the world, but somehow still managed to be happy. In 1953, he would have not have understood the kind of luxury we had in LaVerkin. We had a small but warm home, plentiful food, and just enough money. We had a Christmas tree with lights and beautiful ornaments on it. If my friend had a tree it was cut by his father and decorated with paper garlands and little else.

My parents did not have a lot of money at that time, but there was sufficient for our needs. I don’t know what my own parents had to sacrifice to buy me the BB gun – they (of course) never told me.

I think that the point of this story is this:

The beauty, worth, and significance of any gift comes from how it is perceived by both the giver and the receiver. A gift casually given may be regarded by the receiver as a treasure, and conversely, a gift thoughtfully given may be treated as valueless by the receiver.

I certainly was proud and excited by my BB gun (long gone now), but the silver dollar was another story that I have told and retold over the years. My grandmother sent it to me in a small box with a ribbon around it. I shook it next to my ear, sat with it and tried to guess what could be so hard as to rattle against the sides of the box so that I could feel it hitting. I got so frustrated that I threw it across the room and yelled: “it’s nothing but an old rock!” Of course, when I opened the box, I was excited to have the dollar, and it immediately began burning a hole in my pocket.

But I think that my excitement was small compared to my friend’s joy over his simple pocketknife. His parents loved him and sacrificed greatly from their meager means to give him the knife.

My grandmother had little. A dollar meant a lot to her. Yet she gave it to me because her love for me. Her Christlike, selfless, giving heart prompted her sacrifice. In the same way, my parents suppressed their wants and needs to give me the BB gun, but I little noted their sacrifice in my childish happiness with my gifts.

Now magnify the love and the selfless, giving hearts of grandparents and parents to infinite proportions. Perhaps by doing so, we can begin to get a glimpse of our Heavenly Father’s love and sacrifice for us as he sent his only begotten son into the maelstrom of mortality. His joy at His son’s birth was tempered because He most certainly knew of the infinite pain His son’s eventual sacrifice would cause Him as he became the redeemer of the world and indeed, the universe. This is how Stephen E. Robinson, in his book, Believing Christ: The Parable of the Bicycle and Other Good News, describes these gifts:

God uses no magic wand to simply wave bad things into nonexistence. The sins that he remits, he remits by making them his own and suffering them. The pain and heartaches that he relieves, he relieves by suffering them himself. These things can be shared and absorbed, but they cannot be simply wished or waved away. They must be suffered. Thus we owe him not only for our spiritual cleansing from sin, but for our physical, mental, and emotional healings as well, for he has borne these infirmities for us also. All that the Fall put wrong, the Savior in his atonement puts right. It is all part of his infinite sacrifice—of his infinite gift.

Consider also the other part of the gift the Savior gave us – eternal life in the celestial kingdom – if we can, as the receivers of the gift, learn to appreciate it fully and take advantage of the mercy He offers us. Our acceptance of his gift, our continual repentance, our service to others, our ability (slowly developed over years of practice) to live the gospel and strive for the perfection He wants for us is our gift to Him and the Father; gifts which they regard as most precious above any other offering we might make.

The Father’s and the Son’s perception of their gift to us transcends mortality and is everlasting. They offer us eternal life and infinite growth – the chance to become gods and goddesses, Kings and Queens in the eternities.  Sadly, the world’s perception is often different. The infinite gifts the Father and the Son have given the world are often little noted, disdained, and ridiculed, but even those who reject the gifts are precious children of our Father-in-Heaven. He and His Son are deeply pained by wayward children’s contempt and lack of understanding but are ever willing to forgive and accept them. Even our perception is colored by our mortal understanding, but is nevertheless supported by our love of the Savior and the Father. Lowell L. Bennion, in his book, The Best of Lowell L. Bennion: Selected Writings 1928-1988, is quoted as follows:

Without the Christ, I must confess I would probably be agnostic about personal immortality. Through him I entertain a hope and a joyful strong trust in the reality of the resurrection. He is in very deed my present Savior from death. How mortal man can earn immortal life as a resurrected, tangible, spiritual being, I know not. I accept it on faith as the greatest gift of God to man, and it comes through His Son.

The best and only way we can show to our Father and His Son how much we appreciate their gift to us is to take advantage of what they have given us – repent and be forgiven. Again quoting Lowell L. Bennion:

…Christ is not only forgiving, but he is a source of strength to those who would change their lives so they can be forgiven, not least of all by themselves. I met a man years ago in another land who was in great turmoil because of his shallow and evil life (as he described and judged it). He had tried for years to create a new mind within him—but in vain. I asked him to render a particular service to Christ each Sunday morning. It was a simple and rather ordinary task in the eyes of most. He was to set the Lord's table with a cloth and trays of bread and water. Mark you, he was not privileged to offer prayers, just to set the Lord's table.

He came to me one evening after church and said, "I'm a new man. I have found my integrity again." Service to Christ, thinking about him, giving to him and "to the least of [his] brethren" in a very simple way led to better things and to a change of mind to repentance and forgiveness.

According to Hugh Nibley, in his book, Approaching Zion:

We can but accept the gifts (by definition a gift cannot be earned) and share them; and they are available but for the asking.

True happiness lies in giving the gifts to him our Father-in-Heaven wishes and yearns for from us. A broken heart and a contrite spirit, all of our service to others, all of our strivings, all of our repentance, all of our love for each other, the gospel, and our Father and our Elder Brother are our gifts to them. Just as they gave the sublime gift, so must we accept and treasure that gift. Then, as we give our gifts, so will they treasure them.