As a kid I would take a week or two each Summer to spend with my grandparents in Salt Springs, Florida where they lived in a small home on Little Lake Kerr. How well I remember the day my grandpa asked if he’d ever told me the story of the shortest Christmas. “No sir,” I said. That was all it took. Sitting on the floor in front of his favorite chair, he spun a tale I shall never forget.

Way back when he was just a kid, he got up one Christmas morning, along with his sister, whom he identified as my Aunt Sadie, and his brother, whom he identified as my Uncle Bonner, and together they ran to the tree in great anticipation. Because they were so poor, each got just one present: Grandpa a cast iron locomotive, Aunt Sadie a beautiful little doll with a porcelain head, and Uncle Bonner a buggy whip.

It wasn’t much but they were grateful and immediately began to play with their Christmas treasures. Grandpa down on hands and knees pushing his locomotive, Aunt Sadie cradling her doll, and Uncle Bonner snapping his buggy whip in the air. All of a sudden Bonner spied grandpa’s rear end and decided it’d make a good target. The cry of anguish quickly turned into anger as Grandpa grabbed Aunt Sadie’s doll and brought it crashing down on Uncle Bonner’s head shattering it in pieces. Aunt Sadie screamed, grabbed Grandpa’s locomotive, and hurled it down the stairs where it broke into several large chunks of iron.

The commotion was such that it roused their father from bed. He came storming into the room, snatched the buggy whip away from Bonner, whipped all three and sent them back to bed. At this point I was completely mesmerized. Grandpa then sat back in his easy chair and with a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face said, “And it was all over in the time it takes to tell it.”

Reflecting on Grandpa’s yarn always bring a smile to my face. But as a kid it struck me as sad. What a horrible Christmas it must have been for Henry, Sadie, and the rambunctious Bonner. Years later I would learn troubling things about Grandpa. He was a cruel and angry man in his early days, and his violent disposition explained much about my own father. Family dysfunction has a way of cycling through generations and that same anger and harshness eventually sprang up in me.

By the grace of God both Daddy and Grandpa came to know Jesus. Though slow and gradual, their transformation was real and permanent. There were many hard times as old habits died slowly. In time, my own struggle with anger and hate was conquered by God’s grace breaking the cycle of generational dysfunction. I think about the story of the shortest Christmas now with a grateful heart. I look back with gratitude for all the Lord has done in my family. I’m happy that I can share Grandpa’s tale with my own grandchildren and add how the Lord brought three angry men to the cross and changed their hearts forever.