Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas! Enjoy your time with family and friends...and do something special to celebrate the day we recognize as Christ's birth.
We've been opening a few presents each day for the past several days....we don't open presents on Christmas Day itself because it's Jesus' birthday, not ours. The joy of giving during this season is spread out for us before and after while today we have a mini-birthday party -- bake a cake and decorate it to have for dessert after Christmas dinner.
Yesterday, as we put another day up on our monthly calendar (don't even ask me about our Advent calendars...we've opened boxes and pockets maybe four times, each time trying to catch up on the days missed...we're on the 21st right now!), I asked Susanna how many more days there were until we got to the Christmas tree day on the calendar. All of a sudden she realized and shouted, "it will be Jesus' birthday!" I loved that "Christmas tree day" on our monthly calendar represented Jesus' birthday to her. I hope and pray that through the years their (our) focus stays on His birthday and not just the worldly hype that surrounds Christmas. We love the presents, the lights, the santas (even though we definitely know he is "not in this world" as Luke puts it!), and everything else that often gets in the way of our view of the manger, but may we, and you, make sure nothing block our view or takes away the deep appreciation of it as everything else stays on the sidelines.
How about you? What do you do special to celebrate Christmas?
Merry Christmas to you all!
2 comments:
We travel to Ohio to be with MY FAMILY!! We also started a Jesus Gift Box this year where we write down good things that the boys did for each other and we "give" them to Jesus as a gift. They are loving it and I want to continue it into the new year.
We join any of our family that's here (last year we got to have your family join us, too), and visit a local nursing home at noon. We sing some carols, the children each play a Christmas carol on the piano in the NH Dining room as the residents gather for lunch. We all visit with the residents and give hugs, etc. Then we go down the hallways and carol for those residents who are unable to go to the dining room for meals. The smiles we see on those faces as they listen to the songs and see the little ones sing are wonderful.
After all that, we gather for lunch at Papa and Grandma's, where this year I had assignments for each of the grandchildren to help set the table, fix the veggie, fruit and cookie plates, etc. We had lunch on the table in no time at all, and were able to relax afer Christmas lunch. Then we sang some carols before dessert...red and green jello cubes with a dolup of cool whip and red sugar sprinkles on top of the cool whip. Looked great. Joshua and Hannah did that, then everyone sampled all of the Christmas cookes from the beautifully arranged plates, )Thanks to the grands for setting them up.
We missed the Carters and Uncle Tim this year, but are thankful we were able to talk with them (you)per phone. May you all have a blessed Christmas and New Year.
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