Page 6 - Presbyterian Connection Newspaper

6 WINTER 2018
PRESBYTERIAN
Connection
A CHRISTMAS STORY
presbyterian.ca
Keeping Christ in Christmas
By Bruce Templeton, Clerk of Session at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in St. John’s, N.L., member of the PCC Trustee Board and Investment Advisory Committee
One day, Santa Claus opened a most interesting letter that had been sent to the North Pole. The letter was from a little boy named Nicholas and it read:
Dear Santa, can the reindeer fly backwards, because I need to go back in time?! I have a special teddy bear that I need to give to someone a long time ago. Please help me, Santa. Your friend, Nicholas.
Santa was intrigued. He knew that while he and the reindeer had time- less lives and hoped for a long and happy future, he had never tried to go back in time and see families in the past. For help, Santa went to his faith- ful source who always had the right solution and, of course, that source was Mrs. Claus. Together they went out to the workshop and asked to see the elves who worked in the creative department. Santa told them of the boy’s desire to give his teddy bear to a child in the past and he asked them if they could build something special in order to fulfill Nicholas’s wish.
Within a few weeks, the drawings were complete and a model was built for Santa to test. It was a Time Ma- chine! Oh, what fun!
Santa was very excited when he contacted young Nicholas with the news, and arrangements were quickly made for the delivery. When Nicholas woke up the next morning, there it was! And Santa had attached a note with the simple question: “May I come, too?” With Santa as the navigator, together they would set the course. And Nicholas would let Santa know when they had found the place where he wanted to leave his teddy.
Join Nicholas with Santa now and jump aboard the time machine. It is big enough to take us all! Buckle your seat belt and go back through time to help Nicholas find the special home for his teddy bear.
Santa pushes the
buttons for 1932
“Let’s go, Nicholas,” said Santa. “I have a surprise for Teddy. Let’s go to a party, where he can meet his relatives. Maybe there will be some honey!”
With a wooooosh, the time ma- chine went back to 1932. Together they crossed the Atlantic to the Staplegrove, Taunton, England, 160 miles southwest of London.
Nicholas and his teddy jumped out of the time machine and wan- dered into the woods between the local church and the Staplegrove Boy Scout Hut. All of Teddy’s friends were there and they heard sylvan voices sing, “If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise.” Nicholas and his teddy had just joined the first ever Teddy Bear’s Picnic.
“Oh, Santa, that was wonder- ful and I surely would love to leave Teddy here, but let’s keep going, for I know there are other places back in time. Come on, Teddy. Let’s go back to the time machine.”
The origin of the teddy
bear in 1902
The doors opened in 1902, and Nich- olas had a tight hold on his teddy. They had arrived in time to find the 26th President of the United States, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, out on a hunting trip.
After three days of hunting, other members of the party had spotted bears, but Roosevelt hadn’t. Now what? The President’s bear hunt would be a failure! The next day, the hunt guides tracked down an old black bear. The guides tied the bear to a willow tree and called for the President. Here was a bear for him to shoot! But Roosevelt took one look at the old bear and refused to shoot it. He felt doing so would be unsports- manlike. Word of this hit newspapers across the country, and political cartoonist Clifford Berryman picked up on the story, drawing a cartoon showing how President Roosevelt re- fused to shoot the bear while hunting
Above and right: Bruce Templeton in action.
in Mississippi. The original cartoon, which ran in the Washington Post on Nov. 16, 1902, shows Roosevelt standing in front. A bear cub then ap- peared in other cartoons Clifford Ber- ryman drew throughout Roosevelt’s career. That connected bears with President Roosevelt and his nick- name became “Teddy Roosevelt.”
Next, an enterprising retailer in Brooklyn, N.Y., candy shop owner Morris Michtom saw the original car- toon of Roosevelt and the bear and he had an idea. He asked his wife, Rose, if she could make two bears and he put them in his shop window. Mich- tom asked permission from Presi- dent Roosevelt to call these toy bears “Teddy’s bears.” The rapid popularity of these bears led Michtom to mass- produce them, eventually forming the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.
At about the same time, a Ger- man company, Steiff, started making stuffed bears. Margarete Steiff was a victim of polio at 18 months old and confined to a wheelchair her whole life. She earned her living by sewing, first by making stuffed elephants, then other animals.
In 1903, an American business owner saw a stuffed bear she had made and ordered 3,000 of them for the U.S. market. She had them made, all by hand! These bears, which also came to be called Teddy Bears, made the international connection. The Steiff Toy Company was on its way and is still in business today. In 1907, just four years later, the Steiff com- pany produced 974,000 bears, all made by hand.
Nicholas’s teddy was shaking with excitement as they walked back to the time machine. Teddy was thrilled. He had traced his family tree back to the very beginning and he thought of staying there to learn more and to
share in this family reunion.
But Santa and Nicholas told him
that there were more stops to make, so this curious little bear climbed aboard as they prepared for their next destination.
Austria in 1818
The time machine doors opened Christmas Eve at about 9:00 p.m. on a picture-perfect Christmas winter scene. They had arrived in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Aus- tria. Santa and Nicholas (still holding Teddy) buttoned up their coats and walked down to a small church and listened as a story unfolded.
The cold winter-night scene was beautiful. The stars were out, there was snow on the ground, there was no wind and the silence was shared with the jingle of sleigh bells on hors- es and the sound of the river babbling through the town.
Two men were standing outside St. Nicholas Church and they were about to make a very tough decision. They had just discovered that the little or- gan in the old church was broken and they’d decided that they had no op- tion but to cancel the Christmas Eve service because they had no music.
A woman came along and started talking to the two men. It was so beautifully quiet and she listened as
they gave her the news about the service. She looked at them both and said, “We can’t cancel the service. It is such a silent night, yes, even a Holy Night.”
With that comment from the wom- an, one of the men, Father Joseph Mohr, ran toward the church and he urged Franz Gruber, the organist and music director, to join him.
“Franz, Franz, get your guitar.”
A few hours later, at midnight, Fa- ther Joseph Mohr held a single piece of paper in his hand. Franz Gruber strummed his guitar, and Mohr, the tenor and Gruber, the bass, sang for the very first time the German song:
Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Just after midnight, Nicholas, by now a tired little boy, cradled his bear and he and Santa prepared to head further back in time. “We are nearly there, Santa,” Nicholas sleepily murmured. “I can feel it.”
AD 280 in Lycia: St. Nicholas
Wooosh, and the time machine opened to the year AD 280 to the town of Patara, in the country of Ly-