Caton's Corner: December 2024

In the Caton house, van, or car, Christmas music is playing pretty much non-stop beginning on our drive home from Thanksgiving dinner all the way through Epiphany on January 6. I’m a music-loving Dad in a musical family, and we have lots of favorites that are always special to hear this time of year. (There are frequent requests to hear “White Christmas” by The Drifters, the doo-wop version you hear in Home Alone, for instance). 

A personal favorite of mine is the classic “The Little Drummer Boy.” Written by American composer Katherine Kennicot Davis in 1941, it’s been recorded time and time again by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby to Pentatonix and Justin Bieber. 

It’s not so much the music or the artist but the story that “The Little Drummer Boy” tells that I find so compelling. 

To refresh your memory, a little child is invited by the wise men to come to the manger to see the newborn baby Jesus. As we know, the wise men come bearing their fine and expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh “so to honor him.”

The boy approaches Jesus and notes that he is “a poor boy too.” In comparison to the gifts the others have brought before him, the drummer boy feels inadequate: he has “no gift to bring . . . that’s fit to give a king.” 

Though he has nothing of material value, he offers what he can: his drumming. He asks permission from Jesus’s mother, and she nods, and he plays his drum. “I played my drum for him . . . I played my best for him.” 

And what is the king’s response to this gift? A smile. The drummer boy’s humble gift was joyfully accepted. 

This scene of a poor child, standing in the dim light of the cave before Mary and Joseph, in the awed silence, has always sparked my imagination. Simple stories like this can often lead us to profound truths. “The Little Drummer Boy” offers a great example for our lives, particularly for our young people. 

We are, each of us, unique and unrepeatable. Jesus doesn’t want us all to be the same. He did not create us to be cooker-cutter followers. What he wants of us is the same as he wanted from the little drummer boy: to share our own unique gifts, and offer them to him and to others to the best of our ability. 

As the verse that inspired our Romans 12 program states, “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them.” Because these are gifts from God himself, the only appropriate response is to use them excellently. 

Like the Little Drummer boy, may we always “play our best” for Jesus!