Christmas day doesn't always bring you the present you want. (As a Cleveland Browns fan eagerly anticipating an NFL championship since 1964, I can attest to that.) But you may just get the gift you really need. And sometimes, you receive something truly special, something you didn't deserve.
For those dismayed and disheartened by the unusually ugly and sadly sinister tone of American politics in 2015, Abraham Lincoln is the gift that keeps on giving. After a year in which xenophobia, naked nativism and religious bigotry became the new normal for the Party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator remains a potent antidote to what ails us.
When Donald Trump slanders Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, he is only saying what his supporters are thinking. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that almost half of Republicans back his call for deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants (85 percent of whom have been here for over five years) currently in the United States. But in the face of this new Know Nothing movement, remember what Abraham Lincoln had to say in 1855 about the original one:

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

A second survey two weeks ago showed that a majority of Americans oppose Donald Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. But among Republicans, almost 60 percent support the GOP frontrunner. Despite the history and the data showing that Muslims in the United States are as American as apple pie, reactionary Islamophobes like Frank Gaffney are now front and center in Republican politics. As the slanders and incitements escalate, so do the attacks against American Muslims and their houses of worship.
But during a far more dangerous time for the United States, one when then nation's very survival was at stake, President Lincoln had a clear message in support of a group despised by most North and South. In August 1863, months before he used the Gettysburg Address to declare America "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," Abraham Lincoln defended his Emancipation Proclamation as inextricably linked to the preservation of the Union. Noting reports from some of his commanders that "the emancipation policy, and use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion," Lincoln reminded his critics:

"You say you will not fight to free the negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you."

A hundred and fifty-two years later, the same must be said for American Muslims. By 2008, at least 3,400 Muslims (and perhaps as many as 10,000) were serving in the armed forces of the United States. Those numbers far exceed the enlistment rates of similarly sized religious denominations, such as Jews and Mormons. And if you still have any doubt that some of them seem willing to fight for you, you can visit them at their resting places at Arlington National Cemetery.

Lincoln did not waiver in his commitment to a "new birth of freedom" even as he endured the darkest days of the Civil War in the summer of 1864. With Grant stalemated in front of Petersburg after the brutal fighting that spring and summer, Lincoln's reelection seemed an impossibility. But when Northern War Democrats and some in his own party were urging him to abandon the emancipation of the slaves, Lincoln was having none of it.

"I am sure you will not, on due reflection, say the promise being made must be broken at the first opportunity...As a matter of morals, could such treachery escape the curses of Heaven or any good man? As a matter of policy, to announce such a purpose would ruin the Union cause itself. All recruiting of colored men would cease and all colored men now in our service would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should they give their lives for us, with our full notice of our purpose to betray them?"

Were he to return black soldiers to slavery, Lincoln declared:

"I should be damned in time and eternity."

In his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln cautioned his countrymen North and South that neither they nor their nation would be redeemed until the promise of liberty for all was made real.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

One hundred and fifty years later, America's redemption is still incomplete. But in 2015, we saw that our redeemers are still at work among us.
After the slaughter of nine at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, one group of Americans challenged us all to mean what we say in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. President Obama was speaking for--and to--all Americans when he described the redemptive role of the black church:

A sacred place, this church, not just for blacks, not just for Christians but for every American who cares about the steady expansion of human rights and human dignity in this country, a foundation stone for liberty and justice for all.

And if we truly believe what we say in our foundational documents, Obama preached in his eulogy, we surely must embrace the murdered Reverend Clementa Pinckney's vision as our own:

What is true in the south is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other; that my liberty depends on you being free, too.

But the message that June day by the President and the congregation of Mother Emanuel was delivered not with anger, hate or desire for vengeance, but with love and grace. And as Obama explained:

"According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It's not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God."

After the bloodbath in Charleston, we didn't deserve grace. It wasn't owed to us and it certainly wasn't earned. But we received that undeserved gift anyway.
Which brings me back to gift we needed this Christmas season. Despite all the tension, fear and simmering resentment gripping American politics right now, it doesn't have to be this way. As our 16th President put it as the Civil War neared its end, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in." And that work, Lincoln explained on Inauguration Day in 1861, was of the heart:

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Merry Christmas from Abraham Lincoln.