12.23-12.25 Christmas

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20081224/1agoodholiday24_cv.art.htm

In his classic short story, The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry tells of an impoverished young husband and wife who each sacrifice something precious to buy the other the perfect Christmas gift.
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Only one in five say they expect it to be less happy. "We're a glass-half-full people," says Kathy Moakler of the National Military Family Association, which helps servicemembers and their relatives.

That optimism begets generosity. "We spend what we can spend, and it hasn't been a hardship in our house," says Suzanne Lemmons, a secretary at M&S Turquoise in St. George, Utah, who donated gifts for children of low-income families at the Paiute tribe's Christmas party.

"As long as we're helping others, we haven't wanted for anything."

Who are the magi?

They're the ones who've tried to make this blue Christmas bright, not in hopes of receiving, but through plans to give ?sometimes to their closest loved ones, sometimes to strangers, sometimes anonymously.

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The magi are the ones who, foten because of their own trials, approach Christmas most thankfully and throughtfullly

Some magi give sacrificially.

Ray and Aileen Copeland, a recently retired couple from Naperville, Ill., say they donated the money for each others' gifts to a food pantry.

"It's nothing extraordinary," he insists. "We're fortunate we could spare it."

Some give empathetically.

Edwin Messikomer of Chadds Ford, Pa., a retired naval officer, says a Christmas memory led him to volunteer to stuff shoe boxes with goodies for international merchant seafarers at the Seamen's Center at the Port of Wilmington, Del.

"I spent one Christmas at sea," Messikomer says. "I know little things mean a lot."

Some give on orders.

Tom Bosch, a hotel manager in Sioux Falls, S.D., says an idea came to him in a dream: Open the place to homeless families on Christmas Eve. So this year the Holiday Inn City Centre will give 200 rooms and a free breakfast to the needy.

Bosch says his Christian faith compels such generosity: "If we can make their Christmas brighter and more cheery, well, that's what it's all about."

In December 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt went to the South Lawn of the White House to light the national Christmas tree. He brought a special guest: Winston Churchill.

"Here, amidst all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home, and in each generous heart," the British prime minister told the crowd. What we have, he said, is "happiness in a world of storm."

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But those who study the history of the holiday are struck by its durability.

Through war and peace, feast and famine, "people have kept doing what they were doing at Christmas," says Karal Ann Marling, a University of Minnesota art historian who wrote Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday.

"In hard times, people try harder," she says. "Nothing has really put a dent in Christmas."

Not the Great Depression nor World War II, when some Americans gave necessities ?razor blades, tires, cigarettes ?as gifts.

Not the Civil War, during which Christmas traditions ?the tree, the stockings, the visit from Santa ?spread nationally. "The idea was to keep the home fires burning," Marling says.

"Christmas has survived all sorts of things," says University of Massachusetts historian Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas. "People reinvent it all the time."

In The Gift of the Magi, Della secretly sells her long, beautiful brown hair to buy a platinum chain for Jim's prized gold watch. He, meanwhile, has secretly sold the watch to buy combs ?"tortoise shell, with jeweled rims" ?for Della's hair.

When they discover their folly, they see in their mutual sacrifice a love that both epitomizes and transcends Christmas.

This season finds many couples in the same spot as the pair created by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910). They include Brandon and Morgan Faulkner of Indianapolis; Tony Glasier and Kathryn Logan Glasier of Visalia, Calif.; and Kate and Tim Frye of Chandler, Ariz.

The couples have suffered economic setbacks. They have agreed to spend little or nothing on each other for Christmas. And they have schemed, individually and secretly, to break that vow.

The fruits of such plotting cannot be revealed until Dec. 25. But the impulse to give a little more ?maybe too much ?is more traditional than mistletoe.

As Della tells Jim in Magi, "I couldn't have lived through Christmas without getting you a present."

Sometimes, keeping Christmas in hard times means having the wisdom to change it.