Because I have nothing else to blog about and I need to get this blog post done quickly so I can wrap up a couple of Christmas projects (pun intended), I will now share a video that was posted on LDS.org a long time ago, but I chose not to share then because it was too cheesy.
What I like most about this video is the feat of impressive shadow-puppetry. What I dislike about it is that it seems to imply that as long as we're nice, we don't need to give each other gifts. That's not really true. In our society, we've sort of dug ourselves into a pit of obligation, where we now need to give gifts to each other.
Rather than telling us to cast aside those traditions and not give gifts to others, I prefer to believe that this video is trying to tell us that, while we may get busy with buying gifts for everyone on our lists, there's one person who should be on our lists that doesn't want a store-bought gift, but rather a gift from the heart.
Heavenly Father gave us the gift of His Son. Jesus Christ gave us the gift of the Atonement. And having the Holy Spirit with us is, itself, a gift. To repay Them, They ask that we try to be a little nicer, to keep the commandments better, to do some act of kindness for someone else. The children in this video give terrific examples of gifts we can give to the Savior. For this Christmas and afterward, I'm going to try to find ways to do good things as a gift to the Savior, just to thank Him for all that He has given me.
But that, unfortunately, will have to come later. I have a little bit of last-minute, Christmas business to take care of, and I'm on a pretty tight deadline. I need to get back to work.
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