My Christmas Story 1958

Ed Decker

Many years ago, in 1958, I worked for a Drapery and Sewing machine store in the little Southern New Jersey town, where I was also a YMCA program manager. The pay was low, and I always had a second job.

The owner of the store was a man named Jack.  He was a short, gruff Jewish man who always had an unlit cigar in his mouth.  He was always fair and paid well for the time because I was a hard worker and could hang drapery hardware and such precisely to his liking. I remember his wife as a sweet lady who was always smiling and kind.

The one job I hated to do was go to a home and repossess a sewing machine. He let people buy them on monthly payments, and they didn’t always follow through. After a few months of trying to collect, he sent me, Mr. Nice guy, to pick up the machines. One year, about a week before Christmas, he sent me to pick up a machine on the outskirts of town.

When I knocked at the door, a tired young woman answered. There was a small child clutched to her skirt. She looked past me and saw the truck, with its store advertisement on the side, and she looked like she would faint.

I explained why I was there, and she started to cry. She pointed to where the machine was sitting, in the middle of a small, sparse living room. There was no Christmas tree.

There was fabric spread around the table, and she had obviously been sewing something when I showed up. 

She told me that she had three young children, and her husband had left them a few months earlier. She was sewing Christmas gifts for the kids out of fabric she was taking from her clothes.

She asked me if I could just give her a few days to finish. It was all I could do not to cry myself, and I just nodded and told her I would be back in January.

JACK GOT PRETTY UPSET when I showed up at the store without the sewing machine. I explained to both Jack and his wife why I did not take the sewing machine, and they kind of looked at each other and asked me about the lady and the kids. Jack chewed on his cigar a bit, harrumphed, and said that I did the right thing.

  A couple of days later, Jack’s wife met me when I came to work and asked me to come to the back room. She said I needed to drive the truck back to the lady with the sewing machine. She handed me an envelope to take to her.  “And Ed. Be sure to give her those things in the back of the truck,” she said. She smiled a bit and walked back to the front of the store.

I walked out to the truck and looked in the back. It was packed with gifts. I could see some of the larger things, like a dollhouse and a bike. And a Christmas tree.

 I drove to the lady’s house and knocked on the door. She had that same panic look that she had before.  She stepped back and sort of gasped out a long “Oh No,” I told her I wasn’t there to pick up the machine. I handed her the envelope and told her I had something in the truck for her.

 When I returned with the tree and a few of the packages, she was already crying. She showed me a fist full of cash and a note from the envelope. The note said that the machine was paid for and was hers to keep.

 It took me an hour to unload the truck and set up the tree, now ringed with presents. She and the kids were just standing there looking at the tree and the gifts from a very unlikely couple. From people with hearts full of true love. 

I cried all the way back to town. When I finally made it back to the store, I stood there with red-rimmed eyes, still sobbing as I struggled to tell them about it.  Even Jack had a tear or two and a strong hug for me as he handed me my own envelope. I didn’t even mind the cigar crushing into my cheek.

 Why am I sharing this with you? Because that experience has stayed with me for almost 60 years. No Christmas goes by without my remembering every piece of that experience. Why has it stayed with me these many years? Because it was the very first time I saw unconditional love in anyone except my mother. 

I want to tell you about another Christmas. This was in 1973. And it changed my life forever. Our son, Jason was just a few months old and his babysitter was the daughter-in-law of a pastor of a small, local church.

 Their 5-year-old son, Donny, would plead with us every time we picked up Jason.’ “Please, Please, will you Come to church on Christmas Eve and hear me sing in the Christmas program?”  His insistent pleas brought us to that small Church that Christmas Eve.

The people I saw and talked to that night had that same unconditional and abundant, bountiful love that I saw in that Jewish couple 15 years earlier. 

Their love and witness drew me to the Cross. I remember every moment of the night when I went forward and fell on the steps to the altar and received the precious gift of salvation from a loving God who brought his only son to earth to pay the ransom for my sins. He took them all away that night.

 I sat back on the floor, exclaiming, “I am free, I am clean, I am His.” Of course, the Lord had a lot of cleaning up to do in this guy. And He did.

 It reminds me of my son Josh when he was a toddler. He had been crawling around the strawberry patch and to say he was covered in red berry juice and dirt from head to foot would be putting it mildly.

I ran a bath and dumped him in. “Get clean, Joshy, get clean” I threw in a bar of soap and a washcloth and left him there for the next half hour, listening to him splash and laugh and splash some more.

I went in to fetch him and he smiled at me, lifted his clean hands, and exclaimed, “See, Daddy, I am all Clean now. He was still covered with a few pounds of dirt, but I knelt down and washed him clean as new.

 Sort of like me when I gave my life to Jesus. I knew I was clean, but He knelt down and finished the job.

Now, here we are, years later. I am still in complete awe that our God loved us so very much that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. He did that for Ed Decker for my sons and wonderful daughters-in-law and their kids and He did that for each of you. But get ready for the ride of your life when you belong fully to Jesus!

My prayer for us all this Christmas Eve is that we each know His full and complete love and live it and rejoice in it every day. God bless this wonderful Upper Room fellowship and God bless you.