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"Do You Hear What I Hear," the Christmas song asks.

That is a thought provoking question during the holiday season. People hear the sounds of Christmas in very different ways. Some hear heavenly angels singing to announce the birth of a savior. Others notice only the noise of crowded malls and the "ching ching" of credit cards as they pile up bills.

But I would hazard a guess that is it a rare person whose heart is not tugged by a special feeling at least once during the Christmas season. Beneath the hectic shopping, baking, and TV specials, most people still detect a sense of mystery, a sense of wonder, a sense of something precious that is not experienced at any other time of the year.

There is much that is timeless and irresistible about the image of that cold, quiet, first Christmas night. The story is related in earthy terms to which all humanity can relate. There is the need for shelter, warmth, safety from danger, and a government regulation that required a pregnant mother to be out plodding and bumping along on a donkey at such an inopportune time. Apparently, unreasonable government regulations date back even to those days.

The shepherds probably shivered and wrapped their cloaks around them as the night wore on, when suddenly the silence was broken by singing, and a baby's cry.

Then add to the story its aspects of hope, humility, family, peace, love, and it becomes truly the number one best seller that endures for all time.

Whatever individuals may feel or believe about Christmas, and although it has been told and retold for 20 centuries, the Christmas story still holds our hearts in a powerful grasp.

Perhaps nowhere are the sounds of Christmas described more wonderously than in Lois Duncan's poem, "The Chest."

These are the sounds many people hear at Christmas, and they are the sounds I hear.

THE CHEST

There is a chest in Bethlehem

Where ancient songs are stored.

Within it lies the chant of Kings

Come welcoming their Lord.

There is a song that shepherds sang,

A lonely song and old,

Of purple mists and huddled sheep

And silent, biting cold.

A child observed a donkey pass.

"It looks so tired!" cried she.

Her tiny voice is in the chest

Though she was only three.

One voice pleads, "My wife must rest,

For we have journeyed far;"

A deeper voice - "There is no room" -

Another - "Look! A star!"

There is a glorious aria sung

By angels grouped on high,

And then a woman's voice croons

A tender lullaby.

The story goes, each Christmas Eve

One child in all the land

Is led by angels to the chest,

The key clutched in his hand.

He lifts the lid, and in a burst

Of many shafted light,

The million songs of Bethlehem

Go streaming through the night.

-~by Lois Duncan