The story takes place just before the birth of Jesus. A four-year-old boy from Jerusalem who has recently arrived in Heaven is The Littlest Angel. He’s also a misfit, disrupting all manner of decorum, singing off-key in the choir, losing his halo, and swinging on the pearly gates. He desperately misses being able to play on earth, and is admonished for his lack of grace. Nothing eases The Littlest Angel’s heart until finally, he asks for a small box of mementos from his earthly home, which brings him such joy that he becomes a paragon of angelic behavior.

As the Nativity draws near, all the Hosts of Heaven are invited to bring a gift for the Christ Child, to lay before the throne of God. The Littlest Angel ponders for a long while, then finally brings forth his meager, rough-hewn box, and lays it amidst the trove of exquisite, shining treasures. However, when the boy sees God’s light passing over the treasures to focus on his box, and then open it, he is suddenly struck by the unworthiness of his present. The author writes:

“And what was his gift to the Blessed Infant? Well there was a butterfly with golden wings, captured one bright summer day on the high hills of of Jerusalem, and a sky blue egg from a bird’s nest in the olive tree that stood to shade his mother’s kitchen door. Yes, and two white stones, found on a muddy River Bank, where he and his friends had played like small brown beavers, and, at the bottom of the box, a limp, tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog, who had died as he had lived, in absolute love and infinite devotion.

The Littlest Angel wept hot bitter tears, for now he knew that instead of honoring the Son of God, he had been most blasphemous.

“And the Voice of God spoke, saying, “Of all the gifts of all the angels, I find that this small box pleases Me most. Its contents are of the Earth and of men, and My Son is born to be King of both. These are the things My Son, too, will know and love and cherish, and then, regretful, will leave behind Him when His task is done.”

P.S. Children’s books and movies about The Littlest Angel were produced in another era. Back then, the angel, who Charles Tazewell described as a brown-skinned boy from Jerusalem, was always given blond hair and blue eyes. I hope someday a new version will show him brown-skinned and Middle-eastern, as the author intended…