It was Christmas season and folks who wished for a white one got their wish. The supermarkets played blaring renditions of all my favorite carols and I had managed to muster up a bit of Christmas spirit in spite of our financial condition.

TV commercials vied for my attention with their offerings of miracle-working gadgets, twelve for the price of one, while I was faced with the decision of having to let some household expenses go unpaid in order to provide just one inexpensive gift apiece for my two small boys, Phillip and Mark. The baby girl was just old enough to be fascinated by the glitter of everything but too young to be offended by not receiving a gift. I was thankful for that.

It was the custom to gather at the grandparents' home on Christmas Eve and for a few years, now, the method of drawing names for gift exchange had been practiced in an effort to make sure everyone had at least one gift. I could remember a time or two when some child would be left without a gift because the person who had his name didn’t make it home for Christmas. Visions of my boys standing giftless and hearing the dreaded words, “Who had that name?” almost made me decide to withdraw from the gift exchange plan and buy my boys a gift and be done with it all. But I decided to go along with the plan.

Christmas Eve came. The family gathered around Grandpa’s freshly cut and sparsely trimmed pine tree. Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, all making merry so loudly it was hard to hear the names being called to come forward for the gifts. Phillip’s name was called early, but Mark stood patiently waiting as package after package passed by him until all had been given out. It had happened!

My heart sank as he tugged on his grandfather’s pants and said softly, “Grandpa, I didn’t get none.” Everybody searched frantically through the discarded wrappings, yelling the famous question, “Who had that name?” They didn’t see him slip away into another room to cry. I followed him and gathered him into my arms. When I realized I couldn’t explain it to his satisfaction, I cried with him.

Then Grandma found us and in her hand was a bright red truck—not a new one but none the less attractive to a little boy. She held the toy out to him and said, “This is your gift.” Immediately his face lit up with a big smile.

I didn’t pray on my knees that night. I just sort of talked to the Lord as I lay in bed. I was resentful of our hand-to-mouth existence. Abraham was rich and so was Job. All I had wanted was to make my little ones happy. “It wouldn’t have taken much, Lord, you know.”

Then the Lord blessed me with a message of cheer in the words of the song, "The Greatest Gift," words reminding me that all the money in the world could not buy the one thing that I was rich in, that I gave freely and daily. LOVE!

I sang those words until I finally fell asleep. When I awoke Christmas day, it was with the joy of knowing that I could make this Christmas special for my family by giving the greatest I could give—LOVE.

"The Greatest Gift" story and lyrics were published in 1984 in a book called The Window of My Soul, written by Eleanor Wright. The story is published as it was written. Copyright © 1984 Eleanor Wright, used by permission.