Stories in this episode: A new Christmas tradition challenges Matt to put into writing all the things he has trouble saying; Gracie, Cescily, Paul, & Sheradon call the pitchline with stories of what "getting it right" looks like for them; Leslie's attempt to skip the holidays is thwarted by a wise dad with three poinsettias and a plan. Find the Pearl S. Buck story "Christmas Day in the Morning" here. For complete show notes for this episode, please visit ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel We'll be back with weekly episodes starting JANUARY 11th. Merry Christmas! TRANSCRIPT KaRyn 0:03 Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay. Don't even say it. I already know that today's theme is a little bit controversial because what does it even mean to get it right? If we take the philosophical route, we'd probably determine that absolute rightness is a construct that it doesn't actually exist because of the sheer number of relative interpretations, depending on our lived experiences, belief systems, cultural norms, and more. And we might determine that it's impossible to ever actually get anything truly, and purely right. And now that we've collectively had an existential crisis together, maybe we can decide to be a little more generous with the imperfections and inaccuracies of the English language, a little more poetic, maybe, as we tackle this idea of getting it right. I think if we look at it through the lens of the restored gospel, we might be reminded that our God is eternally interested in us getting it right. And he's been really generous with us as we play the long game of perfection. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the plan of salvation and the Atonement. We do our best with faith and humility and he makes it right. And of course, when we apply getting it right to this beautiful season of Christmas, that's a celebration of that perfect act of selflessness. I don't think it takes a PhD in philosophy to recognize our own efforts towards true discipleship, and the efforts of others. Christmas is the perfect time to internalize this truth: that we are all on different paths that lead to the same place when our hearts are turned in the right direction. And today, we've got six really short stories about holiday hearts turned right. These right turns might look a little bit different than your right turns, but that's what's so exciting about storytelling: we get to witness one another's uniquely drawn paths and celebrate both the heartaches and the wins together. Our first short story comes from Matt, a father who found himself wondering if he could be the change he saw his family needed at the holidays. Here's Matt. Matt 2:14 I don't remember exactly what year it was how it started. It was a while ago, the kids were teenagers. And I remember, though, that we were kind of getting to that point where you're in the arms race of Christmas, as your kids get older. And so you kind of have to, you know, up it each year to try and make sure that they're excited as they get older because the things that they they need kind of get more and more expensive. We're going around fighting the battle to try and get presents and I asked the kids about what they had gotten the previous year. And they didn't even remember. And so I was sitting here in the middle of this battle, trying to get all the presents and go into the different stores and they don't have what you want and whatnot. And then to hear that they didn't really remember what they got the year before. It kind of hit me like, "Well, then what's the point? What are we doing this for?" This is nothing on the kids. They're great kids. But I had, even myself, tried to think back to what gifts I had got the year before. And you just you don't really remember those things, you remember experiences. And so I thought, "Well, maybe this is something that that needs to change." And to understand, I'm not a very empathetic person. I'm not very good at you know, I mean, I try and understand people's feelings, but I'm not, I'm not very good at it. And I'm especially not good at expressing any feelings. And my wife is very good at pointing that out to me as something that I need to improve on. And she had mentioned before, that – I don't know if it was for a birthday or anniversary but – she said, "You know, you don't need to get me a present, I just want to letter. I just want to know how you feel." So with that background, in the midst of this Christmas time and the hecticness and not remembering the presents and my wife saying that, I thought maybe this is a good thing that we can do, is to cut back on the presents, the monetary, actual physical gifts, and we can give letters about how we feel for each other. There was no pushback from the kids, and we didn't cut out presents at all, because it was kind of fun, so what we did is we said – so there's five of us, you know, the parents and three kids – and we said, you know, "Give each other a gift but keep it less than $20." So we still went and found something but because we set that $20 limit, you kind of had to think a little bit about you know, "I don't want to just give him some junk." So I actually got some really thoughtful gifts, and so still kind of fun because we had things to open, but the focus was the letters. So I'd like to say that, you know, I prepared the whole year and took notes and wrote in my journal about all the wonderful things they did, but I wasn't that good. So it would kind of come down to December. And I knew as it was looming, then you start thinking about, okay, what are some of the things that have maybe gone on this year that I can talk about in that letter? And what are some things that I can say that are meaningful, that maybe I didn't say last year? So that it does doesn't become repetitive, you know, saying the same thing each year. And truly, what is it about them that I love and appreciate? As I started to think about my family, it took that focus off of me and onto them, and I start to feel maybe even just a teeny little bit, that true meaning of Christmas, which is the gift that our Savior gave us. And it allowed me to then focus on giving a little bit of myself, to them. You know, each Christmas we hear about, you know, at Christmas, we are the people that we should be all year. Well, I don't even think at Christmas I was the person I should have been all year round, because of this, you know, not being able to express my feelings or not taking the chance. It's something that was always really tough for me to express those feelings. But because it was written, it was easier for me. And the surprising thing was that once we started doing it, how awkward it wasn't. Knowing that it was expected, and that they were expecting this letter from me, helped me to kind of overcome that. And so I guess the surprising thing to me was how easy it was to get into it. And to be able to write those letters, which before felt like such a difficult, awkward, embarrassing thing that I didn't want to do. Hopefully, it's been able to help my kids get better at expressing themselves, to do that. I know it's helped me, and I know that now – I actually, not that I didn't look forward to Christmas before, but I look forward to it with a new – I just I look forward to those letters, and I have them all my journal. I don't know if my kids keep all of their letters, I'm assuming they do. But I know my wife and I keep ours. And it's kind of nice to actually get out and read them sometimes, especially when you're, you know, we all have struggles. And there's times when you feel like you're kind of – "Ah, I made the wrong decisions. And I'm kind of feeling beat down." And you can pull those letters out. And you can look at them and say, "Well, at least there's four people in the world who appreciate me. And I've got proof in these letters." This isn't something that has turned our family into some super holy family that's ready to be translated or anything like that. We still have arguments as a family, it's just something that's helped us to take some of that negative and commercialism of Christmas out of our house and to make it more peaceful, and it's helped us to get closer to each other and I think in that respect, closer to our Savior. KaRyn 8:29 That was Matt. I first learned about his adventure and Christmas letter writing from his daughter our story producer Erika. We were talking about the story from Pearl S. Buck that they retold at last year's Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert called, "Christmas Day in the Morning," and it's a story all about getting it right. If you haven't seen the concert or read this story, I'll give you a really quick synopsis. It's all about an empty nester named Robert who is grappling with the changes in his life at Christmas time. Now that there are no little children to surprise and delight, it seems like the spark of Christmas has gone out for both him and his wife, and he's not really sure how to get it back. So he remembers a Christmas as a youth when he surprised his father by getting up before him and milking the cows so that his dad wouldn't have to work on Christmas Day. He remembered that that work wasn't a chore anymore, because he loved his father and his father loved him, it was the most joyful cow milking he'd ever done. And that memory awakens in him this truth about getting it right. That when we harness the love that's already been given to us by our Savior, whatever we offer to others with that love will be a joyful, joyful gift. The right gift. And so, Robert is reawakened to the joy of Christmas and he decides to write a letter of love and gratitude to his wife as a gift to her. It seems almost ridiculous how relevant that 80 year old story is right now in the mi
