From Girbaud jeans and Guess shirts to Donkey Kong and Billy Ray Cyrus, step back in time and read the funny yet spiritual Christmas story by Hank Smith. 

One of my favorite authors and public speakers is Hank Smith. I love his light-heartedness when it comes to telling a story and his ability to always relate it to something spiritual. This is exactly what he does in this Christmas story that you are sure to love! 

Gibaud, Guess, and God

The year was 1992. Most everyone had seen Disney’s latest film Aladdin, with the hilarious antics of Robin Williams, and we had a new president of the United States, a Southern man named Bill Clinton. But I didn’t really care about politics or Aladdin, really; I was more concerned about Candace Cameron on ABC’s sitcom Full House. She was gorgeous.

I was fourteen years old and in the middle of my eighth-grade year at Pine View Junior Hgh School in a small but growing town in the southwest corner of Utah. There were many things in life I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know them today – things like the inner workings of quantum physics and the whys and hows of thermodynamics – but there is one thing I am totally and utterly sure of: junior high school was concocted in Satan’s living room and built in his backyard.

Honestly, whose idea was junior high? Who was the lunatic who gave birth to this cesspool of anxiety and self-doubt? We take almost all of the most insecure people in society and put them together in one building for eight hours a day, five days a week, and don’t even question the whole idea. We even buy our beloved young ones new clothes as we send them off to this land of overwhelming vulnerability, cruel bullying, and up-to-date temptation.

It was in that kind of junior high school land that I walked the halls with a fully brushed, blond, curly mullet. I was entirely sheathed in the 1990s. The hours I spent with my Sony Walkman made certain I had every Boyz II Men song memorized. I was overflowing with unearned confidence and was steadily working my way up the social pecking order, sacrificing old elementary school friendships with those who were now deemed too “uncool” in order to be crowned with the honor of becoming one of the popular kids. Yes, I was radical. Yes, I was da bomb. Yes, I was too legit to quit.

There was one thing that made me better than all of my peers. I owned the one thing that christened me a king among the peasants. When I started school that year, my parents bought me a brand-new pair of Girbaud jeans. I had coveted those jeans from the moment I realized how they would propel me up the ladder of social significance. Those jeans cost my hardworking parents somewhere around seventy dollars. Could they afford to spend that kind of money on a single pair of pants? As if! But what did that matter? No sacrifice was too great for the accolades I would receive from the other nobles, aristocrats, and jocks when they saw the white Girbaud tag glimmering off the fabric that covered the fly. Those jeans were a mark of my superiority. I wore them with pride. When I put them on, I felt powerful. With my Girbaud jeans, I was all that and a bag of chips.

It was in the middle of all my social maneuvering that I came to a harsh realization. The jeans had done for me what no other piece of clothing before them had come close to doing – they were opening the door for my being dubbed “popular.” But my social goals were being undermined by a simple fact that plagued my thoughts from the moment I entered the school each day. The most popular students didn’t simply wear Girbaud jeans; they also wore a shirt that, when combined with the jeans, a brown braided belt, and Air Jordans, made them socially unstoppable. The shirt came in two distinct styles. It was either adorned in horizontal stripes, alternating between solid white and a stripe of one color, such as blue or red, or it came in one solid color. Having a striped or nonstriped shirt made little difference as long as the wearer had the mark of royalty embroidered across the front of the shirt in all caps: GUESS JEANS, INC. A single shirt cost more than my jeans, but I absolutely had to have one. There was no question about it. I could no longer rely on my Hypercolor shirt to make me stand out. My parents might as well ask me to survive for a year without oxygen if they expected me to survive without a wicked awesome GUESS JEANS, INC. shirt.

Lucky for me, Christmas was quickly approaching. I saw this as the perfect opportunity for my parents to buy the shirt, and I was certain they would come through for me. I asked my mother about the shirt more and more as Christmas approached. With a GUESS JEANS, INC. shirt tucked into my Girbaud jeans, which were, of course, pegged around my ankles, I was sure to be catapulted to the top of Pine View Junior’s social hierarchy.

I was blind to the lights, messages, spirit, and warmth of Christmas. For me, Christmas was about one thing: a GUESS JEANS, INC. shirt. I couldn’t have been more excited. I would sit and smile through the endless holiday parties with family and friends, feel-good Christmas stories and movies, and traditional holiday songs – as long as it meant that when all was said and done, I would have that shirt. I had found the meaning of Christmas, and I was praying it would be under the tree on Christmas morning.

The day finally arrived. My family had stayed the night at my grandmother’s house in Salt Lake like we had done every year since I could remember. As soon as the last person was awake, we gathered in the family room, each of us in our parachute pants. We had swollen faces and bed head. It was then that we began passing the presents from one person to another until everyone had a massive pile of colored boxes and ribbon displayed at their side. There were gasps of excitement from my sisters and some moans of complaint from my brothers as we opened each present one by one. As my pile of gifts began to dwindle, I found myself becoming nervous. Where was my shirt? My family had already given me many wonderful gifts, but that didn’t matter much to me. What did any of it matter if I didn’t get what I really wanted? It was then that my mother pulled a perfectly wrapped gift out from behind her back. She handed it to me with a smile. She probably said something very sweet, but I was too busy taking in the realization of what was happening. Yes! Yes! Yes! I unwrapped that box  faster than Billy Ray could sing “Achy Breaky Heart.”

I’ll never forget lifting the lid off the box and seeing the embroidered words. My heart skipped a beat. My mother had gone over and beyond the call of duty. For me, her favorite child, she had purchased a pure white GUESS JEANS, INC. shirt. I decided it was a symbol of my “celestial” popularity. I was absolutely and completely elated. Christmas was a complete success.

Within seconds of opening the present, I had the shirt on. It fit perfectly. It was everything I had thought it would be. I was already picturing myself walking down the school hallway. Every girl would adore me, and every guy would envy me.

I was in heaven, and at that point, there was only one thing that could take my mind off of my new shirt: food. My dad always made a huge Christmas breakfast after we opened our gifts, and the smell of scrambled eggs smothered in cheese snapped me back into reality. I quickly made my way out of the living room and into the kitchen before my siblings could beat me to the hot pancakes. As I sat down at the kitchen table, I poured myself a glass of grape juice and waited for my dad to fill my plate. As he did so, I picked up the juice to take a sip before digging in.

I have never been a coordinated person. The hours I spent on the Atari playing Donkey Kong never really gave me the agility and finesse I hoped they would.

As the glass hit my lips, I must have completely overestimated the size of my mouth. To be honest, I really don’t know what happened. All I know is that the grape juice was intended for my stomach, and most of it made it there; however, a small amount, probably not more than a tablespoon, dripped out of the side of the glass, down my chin, and right onto the center of my brand-new pure white shirt.

I had literally opened the box ten minutes earlier, and now I sat in my grandmother’s kitchen with a long purple stain directly in the middle of my shirt.

I didn’t know what to say. Dumbfounded, I looked down at the stain and then up at my family, who hadn’t noticed that in a matter of seconds my entire life had crumpled into oblivion. I calmly got up from the table and, when out of sight, ran panicked into the bathroom. I thought if I soaked the shirt under the water from the faucet the stain would disappear. I scrubbed and soaked, scrubbed and soaked. The stain didn’t disappear. I appealed to my mother for help. Everything she and I tried that morning, from hairspray to vinegar to bleach couldn’t entirely lift the three-inch purple line from the white fibers of the shirt. It stood out like the mole on Cindy Crawford’s lip, and it was never going away.

The only hallway my shirt ever saw was the hallway of grandmother’s house. I never wore it to school. I never experienced social glory I was certain it would have brought me. It sat in my closet and only came out when I needed to mow the lawn or paint the fence.

Fast forward twenty-two years.

I’m sitting in my own home at the kitchen counter, typing away at my laptop in a blue T-shirt, white gym shorts, and dark black dress socks. I stopped thinking about fashion a long time ago. My five children are all asleep, and my wife is reading a book over by the Christmas tree. Every single popular movie, clothing brand, musician, and celebrity from my teenage years was replaced by a new one, and that one was replaced by another one, and that one by another one. (Although I hear you can pick up a pair of used Girbaud jeans on eBay for around five dollars.)

The siblings I unwrapped presents with each Christmas are now parents themselves. My mom and dad, who carted me around during the holidays, are now grandparents. My Girbaud jeans and the two other GUESS JEANS, INC. shirts my mother bought me after my grape juice mishap have all been thrown away or donated to charity.

My attitude and outlook on life has changed. Instead of worrying about looking good, I worry about being good. I want opportunity more than I want popularity, and I hope for greater spirituality more than greater superiority. The things I used to feel were crucial to my happiness I now look upon as superficial. In fact, there is almost nothing about my life today that resembles my life as a teenager.

Except Him. I didn’t notice or understand the Savior’s subtle hand in my life then, but I can see it now. He was patient and kind as He allowed me to learn the lessons of life, sometimes the hard way. He saw me not just as the fickle teen I was but for the man I could become. Instead of seeing a superficial child, He saw potential.

I now worry more about spiritual stains than physical stains. Each Christmas, I celebrate my chance to completely eliminate any spiritual stains and become pure again. The commemoration of the birth of the Son of God reminds me of the eternal and unchanging love Christ showed through His Atonement. The stain on my shirt never came out, but there is no stain that can’t be completely cleansed and purified by the power and majesty of our Savior.

This story is taken from Christmas Treasures, a Collection of Heartwarming True Christmas Stories. This book is available on Amazon along with several fantastic Audio CDs by Hank Smith. My family and I are huge fans 🙂   

For a beautiful Christmas music video, check out “Do You Have Room” by clicking HERE. A perfect musical number for any Christmas lesson. Includes beautiful Christmas pictures. 

Yours Truly,

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