Same thing every year … The cold sets in and the seasonal pondering gets icy.

Certain ponderings occur about this same time, especially those that ponder stories of many Christmases past.

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sharon who loved to go to school. A logical sort of child, she loved school because here was where she found logical answers to the many perplexing questions of life. At least, she had been so blessed during the first four months of that first year in school.

Then, that December, just before Christmas, something happened to shake her belief that teachers were the most logical of people.

She would recall that day for the rest of her life. How the children all listened attentively while the teacher told the class a story about a new-born baby who would suddenly appear on Christmas morning. The baby was to be placed in a crib of straw that was waiting on the alter of the big, old church next door.

For whatever reason, and the teacher offered no explanation, the little baby boy would be practically naked, with no sheet or blanket, no shirt, not even a thin little nightie to cover him. That was terrible, thought the little girl. She had been inside of that church and knew how very cold it was and had often heard people complain that it was just too cold and drafty and it should be torn down and wouldn’t it be nice to tear it down and build a lovely modern new church.

But the old church had remained. Now here it was December and the closer it got to Christmas, the colder that old church became. Why would anyone consider this a suitable place for a helpless, naked new-born baby.

That was little Sharon’s first hint that perhaps teachers were not so logical after all.

That was how Sharon’s peculiar attitude to Christmas was born and why every Christmas the image of a practically naked new-born baby reappeared in the corners of her mind, crying out for help, each year the cries becoming louder and stronger, a metaphor for a child’s wish to
Change the World.