But most of all Anonymous loved the singing, and he discovered to his great delight and the delight of everyone else that he really could sing. He had a beautiful voice and he learned to accompany himself on a little harp that the celestial harp maker had made just for him.

The angels liked to perform the music of all the great composers...Bach, Handle, Mozart. but the angels of heaven really liked all kinds of music; and it got to be a kind of tradition that after a concert, when the angels were just relaxing, they would send for Anonymous, and he would come and sing and play for the other angels. Everyone recognized that Anonymous had a very special gift.

Anonymous made a lot of friends in heaven. But there was one who was a special favorite. This particular friend seemed to be everybody’s favorite, but Anonymous somehow felt very close to him. It was almost as if without speaking; they understood each other...it seemed to know each other. At first, Anonymous had not really been aware of him. In a way he was like everybody else; and yet in a way so different. Anonymous soon discovered that whenever he really wanted to be close to his friend, he found him always near by.

Well, the days passed, and then it seemed one day that everyone was starting to get busier than usual. More practice sessions had been called for the heavenly choir, and it seemed now when they sang, even the great vaults of heaven would shake and reverberate with the joyous Alleluia Choruses.

Everybody seemed extra busy, and when Anonymous tried to find out what was going on, anybody he would ask about it would just say, “Why Anonymous, it’s almost Christmas. Didn’t you know?"

Anonymous really didn’t know. He remembered something about the word Christmas, and he seemed to remember the stores and shops of London being lit up and decorated in a special way whenever it was Christmas. Lots of people went to the churches, and it was a time, he remembered, when people seemed a little nicer, and occasionally gave him a penny or two when he stood begging on the street corner. But beyond that, it was all just a mystery to him.

But Anonymous knew that he could talk to his special friend about anything. So he found him and asked him what this Christmas thing was all about. And what a story his friend told. He told of a child, born in a bleak, dismal corner of the world...in a stable, because there wasn’t room for him anywhere else. His first bed was a feeding trough. He told of this child grown to manhood; how he left his home and became a wanderer ...no place of his own to lay his head, just like Anonymous. He was nearly always misunderstood, sometimes even by his own little band of followers. He knew what it was to be lonely, cold and hungry.

But oh, how he loved people. He would talk to them by the roadside, help them whenever he could, comfort them when they were sad, and he wanted people to know him and share their lives with him.

But he was rejected and even killed. And he told Anonymous about the terrible pain and fear this man had known. And Anonymous understood. Anonymous knew that Christmas meant that God had sent this child to be with all the anonymous people of the world; and that this Son of God had gone through it all just like Anonymous. There wasn’t any sadness or grief or fear or hope or joy that God’s own son hadn’t experienced himself. Christmas meant “God with us”. And Anonymous said, ‘he was with me all the time and I didn’t know it.” Then his friend, very quietly and very gently, said, “And now Anonymous, you’re with him and you do know it.” Anonymous then realized that his dear friend was Jesus himself...his wonderful Lord.