Advice from Céline Dion and Alma the Younger: Don't Save It All for Christmas Day

In my workplace we have a very nice, spacious, well-lit, and comfortable lobby that can seat several dozen people. It is a yearly Christmastime tradition for high school choirs from across the state to come each workday at midday to perform in the lobby, while workers gather ‘round on their lunch breaks. I’ve been going down there at lunchtime for the past few days to enjoy the music. Each time I go and listen, especially when I listen to the songs about the Savior, I can’t help but be full of bliss. Those young students sing the songs so beautifully, with an attitude of gentle humbleness because they understand the holy nature of the songs.

This 2013 Christmas I’ve been pondering something that I’m not sure I’ve ever consciously pondered before. I’m pondering how it seems to me that the dear Savior Himself puts a great big stamp-of-approval upon the offering of any sweet Christmas carol or story about Him that is shared in respectful reverence. I sat down in the lobby this afternoon to listen to the choir sing, and I felt the bliss, and I noticed the singers’ veneration, and I don’t know what one word with which to describe it all, but it was just super good, as if God Himself beheld it and saw that it was good (book of Genesis reference intentional, jajaja).

Maybe that’s why we feel so much joy at Christmastime—because at that season we sing things and do things that are particularly pleasing unto the Lord, and in return He seems to smile upon our acts, which smiling we can often sense in our hearts.

As the intensely talented Céline Dion sings on track #2 of her 1998 album These Are Special Times: “Don’t save it all for Christmas Day. Find a way to give a little love every day.”

Fabulous song. If you don’t know it, look it up; I urge you.

These Céline lyrics remind me of a favorite verse of mine in the Book of Mormon. Alma 37:36 reads “…let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.”

When today's high school choir honored Jesus Christ and His life and service in song, they did so with great care, and I really do think God smiled upon the concert and saw that it was good. :) But I'm gonna be Captain Obvious here and make the suggestion of "Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could honor the Savior and do good works as He would do (and would want us to do) not just at Christmastime, but all the time?"

The Céline and Alma advice, my dear friends, is the way to go: to not "save it all for Christmas Day" but to try to be giving and loving every day. I think it would be a pretty swell thing to be able to sense the Lord's smiles always! In January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and all those -ober and -ember months! Uh huh!

P.S. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! I hope your New Year resolution will be to become a lover of flossing!