A few years ago my wife and I went to several stores a day looking for a special wooden train station for my son for his wooden train tracks. It was the one of the few things on his list and it was the one thing he said he wanted more than anything else.

We don’t go all out for Christmas, but if the one thing my son wanted was a $30 wooden train station I was determined to do everything I could to make sure he got that. We looked in big toy stores, smaller local boutiques, museums and hobby shops. We drove to cities and towns all over looking for this wooden train station. We got outbid at the last moment over a dozen times on eBay. It was a frantic search. We finally found a store in England that was willing to ship us the very train station our son wanted for a price that was over three times the $30 price tag that it was originally sold for. He opened it Christmas day and played with it right away. It was great to see him so happy.

The next day he didn’t play with it at all.

Nor the next.

Nor the day after that.

After a couple of weeks it was hidden in the bottom of his closet.

By February he put it in the Goodwill box in our garage to be given away the next time we were out.

The gift he wanted so bad. The gift we spent many hours searching for. Already a “has-been” after 6 weeks.

I rescued the station from the Goodwill box in our garage and I put the train station right next to the Christmas decorations so I can be reminded every Christmas season since that the presents my kids so desperately want will soon be given away. I need to be reminded that the presents I give is just stuff. And I don’t want my kid’s Christmas to be defined by stuff.

It’s my prayer that none of us have a Christmas this year that is defined by toys and trinkets, but by the celebration of the greatest gift we can ever receive-Christ Jesus, our Savior!