Christmas Devotional Telecast to Members

President Ezra Taft Benson was present at the Church’s annual Christmas Devotional December 6, marking his first appearance in the Salt Lake Tabernacle since he was hospitalized October 15 suffering from a mild heart attack.

“Thank you, President, for coming,” said President Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency. “All of us here on Temple Square and the many thousands in stake centers across the country rejoice together over your recovery and your presence here this evening.”

In response, President Benson rose and briefly addressed the capacity crowd of more than six thousand.

“I love the Church everywhere,” he said. “I know it is a living church, and I love it with all my heart.”

After the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang several Christmas carols, President Hinckley said, “Let us go for a moment back to the first Christmas celebrated here.”

He noted that the winter of 1847 had been mild, but there was little celebration that Christmas eve. “Santa Claus had not traveled with the Saints on the long journey across the prairies and mountains. … Even on this most sacred of holidays the time was spent for the most part in working,” he said. “There was much to be done and no time to be lost.”

A Sunday service convened on December 26, with Parley P. Pratt as speaker. “Brigham Young was not here,” President Hinckley said. “He had come with the first company and then had returned to Winter Quarters.”

A young girl who had been present wrote, “What a meeting it was. We sang songs of praise, we all joined in the opening prayer, and the speaking that day has always been remembered. There were words of thanksgiving and cheer.”

She wrote of eating wild rabbit and a little bread for dinner. “In the sense of peace and good will I never had a happier Christmas in my life,” she said.

“How thankful we ought to be … for the tremendous faith of our grandparents and great grandparents who came to this hard and difficult country so that they would be free to worship God in the name of His son, Jesus Christ,” President Hinckley said. “How thankful we ought to be that those days of poverty and struggle, of hardship and hunger, are long since gone.”

He told the children listening to kneel before they go to bed and thank their Heavenly Father for the great blessings they enjoy.

“I know, of course, that there is much hardship and suffering in some places,” President Hinckley said. “I know that there is hunger and discouragement. … To all those who experience these adversities, I pray that the blessings of the Lord may attend you and that there will come out of the hearts of many around you kindness and love and sustenance and help according to your needs.”

He said that “all of us stand a little taller at Christmas. All of us feel a little more generous, a little more forgiving. All of us are disposed to be a little more kind. And this is of the very essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

President Hinckley noted that the Christmas custom of giving gifts originated with the wise men who found the Christ child by following the star of Bethlehem, and “presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” (Matt. 2:11.)

Holding up a Bible and a Book of Mormon he received many years ago, President Hinckley said, “I hold in my hands gifts which I have received. I regard them as gifts of Christmas because they are really gifts from Him. He has revealed them to us. They speak words of promise concerning His coming. His voice is heard rising from their pages. They testify of His living reality.”

Other books containing these gifts, he said, include the Doctrine and Covenants and its companion, the Pearl of Great Price.

President Hinckley quoted from the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 76:41–42): “That he came into the world, even Jesus, to be crucified for the world, and to bear the sins of the world, and to sanctify the world, and to cleanse it from all unrighteousness;

“That through him all might be saved whom the Father had put into his power and made by him.”

“These are my gifts of which I speak this Christmas time,” President Hinckley said. “Their great message, ringing out as a quartet in perfect harmony, is as strong and clear as the bells on Christmas day.”

The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was telecast by the Church satellite system to stake centers throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

A capacity crowd gathered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle to hear the Christmas devotional December 6. (Inset) President Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency, spoke. (Right) President Ezra Taft Benson attended. (Photography by Jed A. Clark.)