On the 9th Day of Christmas Past,
Question: How did young President Gordon B. Hinckley express his gratitude Christmas Day 1933?
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“Missionary Christmas”
“In 1933 twenty-three-year-old Gordon B. Hinckley found himself sitting before a small fire in his missionary apartment in England. It was Christmas Day, and he had been in England for six months. It was Elder Hinckley’s first Christmas away from home. He sat before the warm glow of the fire in the boardinghouse where he and his companion were living and thought of his loving family in Utah. Those joyful family Christmases seemed very long ago and far away. His mother had been dead for three years, but many times he felt that she was near him, helping comfort and sustain him. Thinking of his mother, he said, “I have tried…to so conduct my life and perform my duty as to bring honor to her name.” That Christmas Day he also thought about his father, Bryant, and the love and support he felt from him. Elder Hinckley picked up paper and pen to write his father a Christmas letter.
“Dad,” he started. “This is the first time in all my life that I have not been home for Christmas. While sitting before a boarding house fire and watching the flames go up the chimney, pictures pass by in memories of other Christmas Days. There is the morning when, pajama-clad, we hurried downstairs long before the rooster in the back yard was awake. Such excitement – bulging socks, games, horns, a bright sweater, candy and nuts and fruit. Then we ran back upstairs blowing harmonicas to show all those wonderful things to you and mother. You were tired out but you played with us, and kissed us before sending us back to bed before daylight. During the day you pulled us up and down the street on our new sled, and we knew you were the biggest, strongest man in the world…Last night I missed the thrill of expecting Santa Claus. You have not come around this morning. I miss you. But with distance between us, I begin to see in your life the spirit of Christmas beyond the magic of Santa Claus…There is a deep and silent expression of the virtues of Him whose birth we honor on this day. God bless you, dad, and keep you ever wonderful to me.”
Christmas is a time to cultivate a grateful heart – to appreciate our family and those things they have done to help us along our way with thanksgiving. Such were certainly the feelings of young Elder Hinckley on that Christmas Day long ago in London.”
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