'My best Christmas ever.'

Ebony, Dec, 1996

I can remember it as if it were only yesterday. My greatest desire was to have a litRe red wagon. But growing up in a poverty-stricken family of eight children, my desire was highly improboble, if not impossible. Christmas to us was usually a new pair of shoes, maybe a coat, never both. It was during this season that a full dinner with desserts would be looked forward to. The church was the center of all of the activities in our community, and each child would be given a poem to say. I still remember the first poem I recited, and I can still hear the applause of the people of that little country church. I still feel the best gift that can be given to our Lord is the gift of oneself. On Christmas morning, we were ad awakened, and my grandmother had placed my first real gift under the tree: my little red wagon.

IT was, I think, last year when I brought my mom out to L.A. She had been out before, but this time I got her a silver-champagne Mercedes. Most of the things I've gotten her, she kind of expected. But this was a real surprise. My mom doesn't really cry; you never catch her crying--but this time I was able to see her squeeze a couple of tears out. It was a good Christmas because just family was there. But I think greater Christmases are ahead of us. We've got Brandon [the young son of Edmonds and his wife Tracey] now.

FOR singer-composer Kenneth (Babyface) Edmonds. It was the joy of giving his mother a gift that brought tears to her eyes.

For gospel singer Shirley Caesar; it was a Christmas with "Momma".

For Rep. Maxine Waters, it was the exhilaration of being able for the first time to buy her children any11\ toy they wanted.

For TV star Suzzanne Douglas, it was--paradoxically--the Christmas Day that she didn't get any toys and what her mother did to teach her that the greatest gift cannot be seen or touched or wrapped.

As these and other newsmakers indicate on the following pages, there is a special Christmas memory in almost everyone--a memory that makes the other 364 days merry.

CHRISTMAS at our house is a very, very special time because all of the family members gather together, and before we can open up a present or anything, we sing Christmas carols and we go around the room giving our testimonies, thanking God. But the most special Christmas of my life was Christmas of '85 because that was the last Christmas that I spent with my mother Hallie M. Caesar. In August of that year she had a stroke. This particular Christmas, I wanted to make it really special for her, so I opened her bedroom door so that she could see the lighted Christmas tree from her room. That Christmas morning everybody in the living room sat around the tree and had to say something. When it came time for Momma to have words--she used to pray for the entire family on Christmas morning--she couldn't speak as fluently as she spoke before the stroke. Her speech was kind of broken, but in an almost inaudible voice she said: "I'll be all right after while. I'll be all right after while." We all broke down and cried. I'm still a Momma's girl, and, I tell you, it still hurts me now. But I know life goes on. I just try to live out everything that she taught me. And I remember Momma, especially at Christmas.

I grew up in poverty and don't have any good Christmas memories from that period. My fondest memory was the first Christmas that I had enough money to buy my two children everything they wanted. I think the 8-year-old got his first bicycle, and there was the special doll that could do everything. That was probably the best Christmas I ever had.

THE Christmas I'll never forget was in 1983. It was the first Christmas I had a child of my own to celebrate with--my son, Billy--and it was also the first Christmas of my life that I was not able to celebrate with my father, Ralph Campbell Sr., who died while my wife was pregnant with Billy. I was very close to my father, and I was so sad, and yet my son was born several months later and that made the Christmas extraordinary. When you realize how fragile and precious life is, it makes you appreciate so much more those who are still here. I begin and end every conversation with my mother and my sisters and my brother with "I Love you" because you just never know when you will have the opportunity to say it again. The loss of someone so special, like my father made us celebrate each other that much more. And that's what we've done. Christmas now is more than just presents. It's the celebration of life itself, which is really what the true meaning of Christmas is about--the birth of Christ.

I'VE had many good Christmases, even when I was growing up [in poverty]. But the best Christmas for me was following the birth of our son, Dennis in 1967. It was enjoyable for my wife and me to see his sparkling eyes as he looked around at the tree and decorations. The same was true when his brother, Vincent, came along. Later, they showed their own excitement when Christmastime came around."

IT was two years ago this Christmas. I had founded a ministry which started in my living room and had grown to more than 5,000, and we had spent seven years building a $3-million church. We were three-quarters through when the initial funding ran out and banks refused to extend another loan. It seemed for a time that all of our work was in vain and that we were on the verge of foreclosure. But a lawyer friend came to our aid and persuaded a local bank and the initial bank to join together to provide the funding that made it possible for us to move in to the new sanctuary. The first Christmas in our new church home was very special. We cut the ribbon, and I was just kind of sitting there, in awe. We had believed always that God's gift is real, and I always say that He will work through us to achieve the dream.