3rd Day Christmas Past Story

On the 3rd Day of Christmas Past, two special stories from MHA Tour Members – Yvette Longstaff & Marci McPhee:
Question: How can you ensure you will have a ‘White Christmas’ this Christmas season?  

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1953 – The Christmas that I remember best

By Yvette Longstaff, MHA Tour Member

            After my Catholic widowed mother had caught me in bed reading the book of Mormon, life at home had become miserable but because I was not 21 years old (legal age in France at the time), I had to wait to be baptized until after my birthday and I was planning on leaving home but it was going to take a few months planning.

                Christmas came that year. I arranged with the missionaries to be baptized the 23rd of December 1953 just before the Christ­mas party when it was almost midnight. I was baptized by Brother De Bruin and confirmed by Elder Virgil Anderson. It was just wonderful to finally be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was walking home with the whole group when Sister De Bruin said, “Your hair is wet. How will you explain that to your mother?” I had not thought that with a baptism at midnight my hair would be wet when I came home. I had a hood on my coat and pulled it over my head. It was not a tight hood and it would be easy to notice my wet hair. I arrived home hoping that my mother would be asleep.  She was not asleep. The light was on by her bed. The door was pulled half closed. I stayed behind the door and apologized for being late and wished her good night. She said “Wait a minute.  Come in here. I want to talk to you.” I entered asking the Lord to blind her that she would not notice my wet hair. She asked explanations why I was so late. I made excuses. She did not notice my wet hair. I walked out thanking the Lord for this other miracle.

             Christmas that year was perhaps the best I had. It was always celebrated quietly at home with a few oranges or roasted chestnuts, attendance at Church either Christmas Eve or on the following morning and Christmas dinner always kept very simple.  This year our home life had been so disturbed that I did not look forward to spending Christmas at home with my mother. It was going to be a pretty gloomy Christmas. My mother had decided that we would go to the midnight mass together at the local parish. It was no use arguing. I would have to comply. But I thought I would try and have my very own Christmas by reading in the scriptures of the birth of the Savior. And then we went to midnight mass. Mentally, I accepted to be dragged there. It was not my choice. We entered the church and it was well lit. There were many people in attendance. During the service I retired into my own thinking. Then from the back of the church, above the crowd, as if it came from Heaven, came the most beautiful Christmas song I had ever heard, “Holy Night.” I listened and it touched my heart deeply and I thought: “I know that God truly lives, that Jesus Christ is his son and his Church is upon the earth with true authority, and of all the people in this church tonight, I am the only one privileged enough to know this.” Suddenly my heart was overflowing with joy and I felt that it was Christmas, truly Christmas.”

(Written in November 1975)

Tropical Christmas

By Marci McPhee, MHA Tour Member

Is that a nativity scene? In this July heat?

A nativity scene was the last thing I expected to see taped to the glass storefront on this small island. The other WorldTeach volunteers and I had just landed in Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, ready to start orientation. By the end of August, we would be ready to take on our classrooms of Marshallese youth for the academic year.

Located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands is a 97% Christian nation with an equatorial climate – balmy and humid year-round. I came to volunteer through WorldTeach, a program that sends volunteers to some of the areas of the world most in need of teachers. This experience was a year-long leave of absence from my job in higher education in the Boston area, where I had been a staff member for twenty years. I left behind my six adult children and six grandchildren (soon to be eight when the twins arrived).

Unlike Boston, the steady tropical heat throughout the year meant that no weather cues signaled the coming and going of the Christmas season. In addition, once I began to understand the heart-deep faithfulness of so many Marshallese, it seemed natural to celebrate the Savior’s birth anytime and every day.

That first nativity scene I spotted wasn’t the last; there were sporadic Christmas decorations in random homes and shops throughout the islands, oblivious to any season.

The next year, the Marshallese saints wanted a “white Christmas,” so they set a goal of fifty baptisms on Christmas Day. Not a white Christmas with snow, but white baptismal clothing. They fell short of their goal – only forty-six. Imagine: forty-six people ready to follow Christ, dressed in white. One by one, they waded into the lagoon to meet the baptizers, who buried each one in the sea, symbolic of Jesus’s burial in the grave, raising each one up to new life because of His redemption.

Whether on December 25 or on April 6 or in the middle of July, the glad tidings are the same: “Fear not (don’t be afraid of anything): for, behold, I bring you (YOU – whoever you are, however high or lowly) good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people (and all means ALL). For unto you (yes, YOU) is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. . . Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:10, 11, 14).

Like the Marshallese, we too can celebrate the good news of the birth of a Savior to redeem us. His birth is a reason to celebrate any day.