My memories of Christmas around the turn of the century in the town of Lynchburg, Ohio, are still crystal clear. My father used to boost me up so I could crank my grandmother’s doorbell, and everybody inside came running. I can smell the warm tallow of lighted candles on the tree and the aroma of homemade candy bubbling in a pot on the wood stove.

It was a thrill to wake up and find an orange in my stocking, and I’ll never forget how excited I was the year I got a banana! We were a country preacher’s family, and we were poor. But we had a mighty good time.

One year my brother Bob and I dreamed of getting a bicycle. For months we haunted the stores looking at wheels and argued long about the color. At last we agreed: It had to be red.

Christmas morning we crept downstairs. There were small gifts under the tree—but no bicycle. Then Mother said to us, “Let’s go down to the railroad station. Maybe Santa Claus forgot something, and perhaps it will come on the morning train.”

So down we went to the old B&O station to meet the train. The door of the baggage car rolled open, and there it was—a bicycle with a light on the front. It was secondhand, and we boys had to share it, but it was ours and it was red! Later I learned that Mother had made her threadbare coat last yet another season so we might have our dreamed-of bicycle.

When I was seven or so, we lived in Cincinnati, close to the tracks where the streetcars screeched around corners. A special car came along to grease the rails, and we children, I’m sorry to say, made fun of the grimy old guy who ran it. “Greasy Dick,” we shouted when he came by. “Hey, Greasy Dick!”

One day right before Christmas my father asked me to come along on one of his hospital calls. “Someone you will recognize isn’t feeling well,” he said. Propped up in a bed was Greasy Dick! My father introduced him by his real name, just as he would the finest gentleman, and when he shook my hand, it didn’t feel greasy at all.

“I hope you grow up to be a fine man like your father,” he exclaimed. My father gave a prayer and patted his shoulder. When we left, my father said, “Remember, Norman, he’s not Greasy Dick; he’s a friend of ours. And he’s a child of God.”

As I grew up, I came to appreciate what a precious gift Dad had given to me. He’d taught me to look for the good in people, always. It was a Christmas present that affected my whole life, and one I’ve always prayed I might pass on to others.

When I became a pastor myself, I started out as the minister of a small church in Brooklyn; and since I was single, the ladies were always feeding me. One Christmas Eve I went to the home of some church members for dinner, and on the door of the house across the street were a pair of wreaths—a traditional Christmas wreath and a somber funeral wreath.

I had a feeling I should see if I could help, but I wondered: Were the people who lived there Catholic or Protestant? I didn’t want to go anywhere if I wasn’t wanted, so I hesitated before deciding what to do. Finally I went and knocked, and when a man came to the door, I explained who I was. The man had tears in his eyes. “Come in,” he said.

Inside the front room was a casket containing the body of a girl who couldn’t have been older than four. “My wife is upstairs with our son,” the man said. “Please go and talk to her.” I went with trepidation. What could I do? What could I say? I was just a new, young minister and hadn’t had much experience with family tragedies.

Upstairs I found a lovely woman and a boy. As I fumbled around for what to say the woman spoke up. “God gave us our little girl,” she said, “and then took her home.”

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She went on to tell me that God understood her grief because he had lost his son. We prayed together, and later on, that family became members of my church. I’d gone in anxious and unsure about how to comfort them, and they’d ended up comforting me. That was nearly 70 years ago, but ever since, I’ve been constantly amazed by the ways in which we interact to help and heal one another.

Once, a young lady from Switzerland, Ursula, lived with our family in New York City. As Christmas approached she wondered what she could give us in gratitude.

She went to a children’s shop, bought a beautiful baby dress and had it gift wrapped. Then she approached one of the Salvation Army people on a corner. “Sir,” she said, “I have a dress for a poor baby. Do you know of one?”

“More than one, I am afraid.”

Together they hailed a cab and the Salvation Army man gave an address uptown. When the taxi pulled up in front of a rundown tenement, the Salvation Army officer took in the package. “Say it is from someone who has been blessed and wants to pass those blessings on,” Ursula told him.

When the cab driver finally delivered Ursula back to our home, he told her there was no charge. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve been more than paid for this.” Ursula told us about her present on Christmas morning. It was one of the nicest we ever got.

After our three children grew up and had families of their own, there came a time when my wife, Ruth, and I found ourselves in London for the holidays. We were determined to have a Charles Dickens adventure. On Christmas Eve we had a hearty dinner and then went walking, our footsteps echoing in the deserted streets. It was gloomy going, and just about the time it seemed our Christmas spirits might never get off the ground, we heard singing from far away.

As we walked along, the sound of trumpeting brass and the chorus of jubilant voices got louder and louder. “O Come, All Ye Faithful!” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear!” We heard them all. As we neared Trafalgar Square, we could see it was packed with thousands of people. A Salvation Army band was playing on a platform. It was bitter cold, but those people were having the time of their lives, singing “Joy to the World” at the top of their lungs.

There we were, so many miles from home, and yet fight at home because of the spirit that surrounded us. We felt the same way several years ago when we took all our children and grandchildren on a trip to Africa, and sat outside our tent under glittering stars as we read the story of the Nativity from the Gospel of Luke.

There’s a story that’s always meant a lot to Ruth and me. The story was about an African boy who gave his missionary-teacher an unusually beautiful seashell as a Christmas gift. The boy had walked a great distance, over rough terrain, to the only place on the coast where these particular shells could be found. The teacher was touched. “You’ve traveled so far to bring me such a wonderful present,” she said. The boy looked puzzled, then his eyes widened with excitement. “Oh, teacher,” he explained, “long walk part of gift.”

Sure, there have been plenty of times over the years when all the pre-holiday shopping and sermon writing and schedule arranging seemed to be too much, and my wife, Ruth, and I have been tempted to throw up our hands and say, “It’s just not worth the effort!” But then we’ve looked at each other and said, “Long walk part of gift.” And we’ve laughed and gotten back to work.

These stories are part of a golden thread that weaves us all together, strengthening us for the years ahead. Christmas is the ongoing affirmation of the greatest ideals and truth that anybody ever came up with. People feel reborn, invigorated, whole. Over and over, through the ages it goes.

Backward glances don’t make me nostalgic and sad—not at all. They give me a burst of excitement for going forward. And they add to the richness of celebrating Christmas now.

This story first appeared in the December 1993 edition of Guideposts.

More inspiring Advent stories from Norman Vincent Peale

A wreath with blazing candles, children building a miniature crèche, an old lady in a little Texas town pondering the “special” gifts she wants to give—these are the pictures in my mind as we move into the four weeks of Advent every year.

This is a spiritual season, of course, a time when the mind and heart turn not only to celebrate but to “making ready the way of the Lord.”

There are all kinds of things we can do to remind ourselves of the spiritual side of Christmas, not just in church, but at home as well. I like to see a manger scene become a family construction project, and I like the idea of creating homemade religious ornaments for the tree.

The custom of the Advent wreath, found most often today in Lutheran and Catholic homes, is particularly appealing. This is a wreath with four candles standing in a circle of seasonal greens. Sometimes the wreath is fitted with ribbons so it can be hung, but I like it best as a centerpiece for the dining room table.

A Baptist family in Hightstown, New Jersey, has a permanent Advent wreath. I know this because of a letter I received recently from Mary Ann Bohrs. “Each Sunday of Advent,” she wrote, “we light a new candle until, by Christmas, all four candles are blazing. Then each evening we light the candles again and read the ancient prophecies.”

What a wonderful sight! Can’t you picture that family, Harry and Mary Ann and their two little boys gathered around the table, the candlelight flickering dramatically, every one of them listening intently to those tremendous Old Testament words?

Those are words that make you sense the long centuries of waiting, that make you experience a mounting excitement about His coming…The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord.—Isaiah 40:3 And the tension grows in that family until there comes at last that quiet moment in the Gospels when…a child is born in Bethlehem…

Mrs. Bohrs closed her letter to me in a lovely way. “As I put our Christmas decorations back in the attic each year,” she said, “I pray that the Lord Jesus be in our lives, not just in our festivals, not just over the mantel, but in our hearts.”

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Certainly it is our hearts that provide the key to Christmas each year. In this respect, I often think of a lady I never even met, a lady named Mrs. Mason. Virginia Rootes Juergens of Dallas, Texas, wrote a story about her and her creative approach to the holiday.

Mrs. Mason, it seems, lived in the small Texas town where Virginia grew up. Mrs. Mason was an elderly woman with very little money, but her Christmas preparations were extravagant.

Weeks before Christmas every year, she plotted and planned for what she called her “Lordly gifts.” Wandering around the little town, the old lady would select three people to give a gift to, three people from whom she expected nothing in return. A lot of thought would go into each present, a lot of work, a lot of self-denial—and a lot of pleasure.

“I just can’t think of my third Lordly gift,” Mrs. Mason said to Virginia one time when she visited the Mason cottage during this period of preparation. “You know, child, we have to give something worthy. Don’t forget, it’s the birthday of God’s Son.”

That year Mrs. Mason had decided already on a pair of shoes for her first gift and had saved the necessary money. Her second gift was to be a week’s mending of a poor family’s clothes. (Mrs. Mason did not disclose the names of the recipients-to-be.) But her third gift, as always, seemed to give Mrs. Mason trouble. “I just can’t think of anything, child,” she said to Virginia, “at least nothing Lordly.”

Before Christmas, of course, just as Virginia knew she would, Mrs. Mason made her momentous decision and carried it through. “Only later did I discover what her gift was,” Mrs. Juergens wrote. “She came in three afternoons a week to ‘baby-sit’ (a term unknown then) and helped my sister Helen and me make cookies while my hard-working teacher-mother was away.”

Mrs. Mason knew what Christmas was all about. She approached it seriously and gaily, indeed it was a birthday to her, and her gifts were Lordly because they were gifts to the Christ Child. No one had to tell Mrs. Mason, “As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”—Matthew 25:40

So Christmas is coming again. This year during these meaningful weeks of Advent, let’s all bring out the trappings of the holiday, but let’s keep in mind what significance they can have just as the Bohrs family does with its Advent wreath.

This year let’s prepare for Christmas as Mrs. Mason did, as we would for “the birthday of God’s Son.” Let’s be creative. And let’s make ready our homes, our hearts, our world, to receive Him.

This story first appeared in the December 1968 edition of Guideposts.

More inspiring Advent stories from Norman Vincent Peale

There is, in my office, a toy coal scuttle that is only four inches high. It has been in my office for years but recently I looked at it as though I had never seen it before. It started me thinking about a lot of things, things like old friends and—Christmas.

The scuttle was a gift from a Mrs. Richardson. I recall that my wife and I were sitting with her before a cheerful blaze in the fireplace of her living room one evening years ago. “A fire stimulates thoughts, doesn’t it?” I commented.