What Elder Gong said during First Presidencys Christmas Devotional

Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued a simple Christmas wish to listeners during Sunday’s First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional. “May your Christmas traditions and memories be merry and bright. May we rejoice in Jesus Christ, at Christmas and every day.”

Speaking from a pulpit bedecked in bright poinsettias, pine tree boughs, holly berries and Christmas lights in the auditorium of the Conference Center on Dec. 3 for the annual Churchwide tradition, Elder Gong shared three of his family’s favorite Christmas pastimes. 

“Layered over time, Christmas memories become traditions, which can deepen our love for Jesus Christ — the Lamb of God, the Son of the Eternal Father, the Savior of the world,” he said. 

First, he shared about the Christmas ornaments that tell his family story.

For example, their little British soldier ornaments remind the Gongs of a Christmas spent in England as graduate students. “We lived in a small apartment on a tight student budget. We counted our pennies before buying a scraggly little Christmas tree even Charlie Brown would have felt sorry for,” Elder Gong recalled.  

Sister Gong used clothes pins to make little British soldier ornaments, each with a black wooly hat and a smile. For 43 years, these clothespin British soldiers have stood at attention on their Christmas tree, reminding them of their first married Christmas.

“Our Christmas ornaments renew warm memories of friends and experiences in many places. The happy, eclectic parade of Christmas memories each year makes us smile,” Elder Gong said.

The prophet Alma testified the earth moving in regular form denotes there is a God. For Elder Gong, the annual rotation to the Christmas season each year reminds him of how time and space can simultaneously be linear and circular, he said. “How a ‘strait and narrow path’ and ‘one eternal round’ can be complementary descriptions of a covenant reality centered in a Christ child born at Bethlehem.”

Another beloved Gong family tradition is to display creches or Nativities. “Don’t you love how Nativities focus on Jesus Christ, inviting us to do the same?” he asked.

Creches can come in every size and setting, made from various materials. “We love that God’s children everywhere depict the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men, shepherds and animals with settings, features and details that are familiar, relatable,” Elder Gong said. “Creches also remind us God loves all His children: We see God’s love in the features of our creches and Nativities wherever they come from.”

The Gongs also love to read together Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” aloud as a family.

Elder Gong explained that the book was written at a time in Victorian England when people were reconsidering the meaning of Christmas. “At a time when many felt unsettled, isolated and lonely, Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’ addressed a deep yearning for friendship, love and anchoring Christian values, just as Ebenezer Scrooge found peace and healing to his past, present and future.”

Then as now, the true meaning of Christmas draws individuals closer to Jesus Christ, born as a babe in a manger. “Jesus Christ knows according to the flesh how to succor us with bowels filled with mercy. Then as now, Christmas celebrates covenant belonging, communion and community in Jesus Christ and each other,” Elder Gong said.

Unfortunately, many think of the grumpy old miser instead of the generous new Scrooge when they think of the character. “Are there those around us, perhaps we ourselves, who could be a different person if only we would stop typecasting or stereotyping them as their old self?” Elder Gong asked.  

This Christmas, perhaps all can receive — and offer — Jesus Christ’s precious gifts of change and repentance, of forgiving and forgetting, to each other and themselves, Elder Gong said. “Let’s give the new Scrooge in each of us a chance to change.”

The Savior came to liberate the captives. “He can free us from the ghosts of our pasts. He can unshackle us from the regrets of our and others’ sins. Jesus Christ can redeem us from our self-centered selves through rebirth in Him. ‘For unto you is born this day … a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2:11).”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEnJ%2BuqpOdu6bD0meaqKVfobKisMSrqmhqYGeAcH2RaGpoamNuhXeFkXJmnqSUmr9us8SrqaKsXax6qLvNoGSfoaKowW680Z6qopyVo7C6ecKhqaKrpKKutHnDnq2orJmku6K4jJyfq6GjqXqwwdFmqpqumaS%2FbrXSZpmoqp4%3D