On a long ago Christmas Eve my parents set out cookies and milk so Santa would have a happy snack after climbing down the chimney. Christmas morn the plate was empty and I was a believer in Santa Claus. Several Christmases later, I heard my parents stirring during the wee hours of the night, placing gifts beneath the tree, some of which contained a note saying “From Santa.” I figured I’d no longer need to sit in Santa’s lap at the department store to tell him what I wanted for Christmas. He would not be coming down the chimney anymore.
Many moons, many festivals and dried-up Christmas trees later, I thought, Gee, wouldn’t it be lovely if for one year we could do away with all the tinsel, blinking lights, and fake snow on the Christmas wreath? Skip the Christmas glitter altogether and leap into the New Year without benefit of eggnog, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or the Christmas “blues.” Might not be so bad after all.
Then — which is now — suddenly a different kind of catalogue arrived in the mailbox. Not from Wal-Mart. Not from Lands End. Not from the Web site for Men Who Hate to Shop for Socks and Underwear with Their Feet. Not even from Santa’s Workshop. No, this one is from “The Most Important Gift Catalogue in the World” by Heifer International. You can find it, if it hasn’t found you. Go to www.heifer.org.
For $120 you can give “a dairy goat” that “can supply a family with up to several quarts of nutritious milk a day – a ton of milk a year.” For $20 you can provide a “flock of chicks for families from Cameroon to the Caribbean and add nourishing, life-sustaining eggs to their inadequate diets.” To fight world hunger a congregation could give a $5,000 “Gift Ark” as a mission project, including “2 Cows to bring milk and income to a Russian village, 2 Oxen to pull plows and carts in Kenya, 2 Sheep to help families in New Mexico produce wool, 2 Water Buffalo for Indonesian families to increase rice production, 2 Camels in India to transport agricultural materials, 2 Donkeys to supply draft power for farmers in Tanzania, 2 Trios of Ducks…2 Guinea Pigs … Rabbits … Flocks of Geese”… and…and … and! How big is the Gift Ark?
How much do the decorations on your Christmas tree cost, and whatever goes under it? Is Santa Claus still hanging around your branches? Who desires a plate of cookies and glass of milk? What happens should your tree not die for not having been cut? Where is the Christ of Christmas?
“It was a Sunday when my mother told me we were going to get a goat which would give us milk. It was the best day of my life!” wrote Beatrice Biira from Uganda. The goat gave birth to two more goats, sold for $200, enabling Beatrice and her family to have “a very good house, roofed with iron sheets” instead of thatched grass — and, yes, much, much more. Merry Christmas.
Posted Dec. 20, 2002 
Charles Davidson is pastor of New Concord church, Concord, Va., and a staff therapist with Pastoral Counseling Service of Central Virginia.
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