![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jetbaby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/johnny-cash.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As Christmas approaches, I want to take a moment to reflect on what Christmas really means.
\nCountry music singer-songwriter Johnny Cash wrote a poem several years ago called, \u201cChristmas as I knew It.\u201d The poem describes Christmastime during the Great Depression\u2014a Christmas that, in Cash\u2019s words, was \u201ckinda lean.\u201d
\n
\nThe gifts his family exchanged consisted of things like a homemade hickory whistle and dresses made from empty flour sacks; Christmas dinner included a squirrel his daddy had killed, and their Christmas tree wasn\u2019t a handsome evergreen; it was a \u201cpigapple\u201d tree decorated with popcorn strings.<\/p>\n
The last few stanzas of the poem are especially interesting. Cash writes the sharecroppers across the road \u201cdidn\u2019t have it as good as us.\u201d He and his brother took a jar of coal oil and some hickory nuts they had collected over to the sharecropper\u2019s porch. An old lady eased open the door and thanked the boys for the simple gifts as they left.<\/p>\n
You would think, with things as hard as they were, Johnny Cash and his family might have felt like their Christmas wasn\u2019t anything all that special. Instead, Cash writes, \u201cfor one of the neighbors and for us, it was a good Christmas night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any more, we get bombarded with conflicting messages at Christmastime. One says, \u201cThere\u2019s more to Christmas than buying things.\u201d The other says, \u201cEverything is on sale. Buy it for Christmas!\u201d This year, I hope you and I both remember Christmas is a celebration of what God has done for us through His son, Jesus. If we remember that, no matter what\u2019s going on, we too can have \u201ca good Christmas night.\u201d<\/p>\n
May your Christmas season be truly blessed and merry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Christmas approaches, I want to take a moment to reflect on what Christmas really means. Country music singer-songwriter Johnny Cash wrote a poem several years ago called, \u201cChristmas as I knew It.\u201d The poem describes Christmastime during the Great Depression\u2014a Christmas that, in Cash\u2019s words, was \u201ckinda lean.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1959,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957\/revisions\/1959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}