When I was 6 0r 7, like most children, I found out there was no Santa. That one event ruined Christmas for me. It was to me dishonest to build up a childs dream, only to destroy it. What fantasy can compare with Santa for a child?
I was a child who was taken most every Sunday to church, but who never seemed to see in practice what I heard. My father was placed in an rphanage as a newborn, and he recieved so little care and attention that the back of his head was literally flat. Research has shown that infants who do not bond with a parent or other adult during that crucial period of time often never bond well with others during their lifetime. My mother was a child brought up with a very abbusive alcholholic father who beat her and her sisters regularly. To add to her pain as a child, her mother had an affair with the town judge. When the affair was discovered, my mother and her sisters were removed
from their home and sent to an orphanage. Some of the sisters were adopted, the rest stayed at the orphanage. She was never shown love, no suprise she didn't know how to show love herself. Also no surprise the churches teaching of a heavenly father who loved her appealed a great deal to her.
I did little to add to the joy of parenting to my Mom and Dad. The middle child of 6, I was stuborn and a slow learner. Every year my report card said, "Steven is capable of much better work". I took second grade twice, and had to take summer school after my forth grade, or would have taken the forth grade twice as well. I was in enough trouble from various misbehaviors that my father said one more, and he would send me to military school. ( He was a sailor.)
The summer after my failer forth grade we moved to Iowa and dad moved to Virginia. That move changed me completely. I became very timid, and did much better in school.
Don't get the idea I didn't like my childhood, because I did. My teenage years were a different story. Being extremely shy as a teenager is an invitation for ridiclue.
There was something I disliked a great deal from as far back as I can remember; going to church. The older I got the more I disliked it. My brother and I , when we had to go alone, would hide out until the service was over, walk in the back door and then out the front door to be picked up. God was not important to me, and in my opinion, church people were just playing a game.
I think it should be obvious, but just to make sure you follow, Christmas was nothing to me.
I left home the summer after my junior year after a fight with Mom;
she said, "appoligise, or don't come back home". Simple choice to me.
The first Christmas after I got married my oldest sister gave me a modern language Bible. Flipping through it I happened to catch the phrase, "If you read the Bible with an open mind, you will know whether it is true or not". That phrase kind of knocked around in my head for the next few months, until I decided to accept that challenge.
Almost as soon as I began reading, I started coming up with arguments against what I was reading. I don't really know how to put this part into meaningfull words. In the simplest terms, it was like God himself followed me around. This lasted for six months! Every movie I saw it was like God showed how that movie undercut His existance. Every argument I came up with was one by one shown to be false. If anyone knows anything about me, they know I don't give up easy. Other people call me stuborn; I say I am persistant
The final argument went back to a statement I had heard in church all my life; " If you want God to accept you, you must give everything to God." I found this was totally false! In order for God to have me, He gave everything up for me. I know this sounds like a thin distinction, but for me it changed the way I saw God. In the only way I understood, I agreed with God. People describe this a million different ways, I will only describe it as stopping my running from God.
So, the way this story is supposed to go, I lived happily ever after. I wish!
About four years after this I contracted a blood disease that has made almost every day since then worse than any day before. That was twenty-five years ago. My mother died the week my first son was born. Alot of my life
has been a struggle, just like yours. The difference is, those quaint, empty sounding phrases I heard and resented all those years have actually come true for me and my wife. I now enjoy Christmas, because I understand Christmas
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