Why I Celebrate Christmas

I've been reading all sorts of things lately about how to honor Jesus this Christmas season. for quite some time, I have been saddened by the commercialization that now surrounds Christmas. But it wasn't until I had children that it really started to bother me. Possibly because I now see the world through different lens and I'm concerned about a lot more than just the commercialization of Christmas.

I'm the sort-of person who likes to imagine taking things to the extreme. I think all about how I should take drastic measures, but never really fully take those measures. My natural first thought was: Well crap. Since Christmas has been so commercialized should we even celebrate it like the average Americans at all?

Now would be a good time to mention what Christmas was like for my husband's family and mine. To sum it up in one phrase, I would say Christmas meant "time with family." This looked very different for Dan's family than it did for mine. His family celebrated Christmas Eve with a quiet evening opening presents and enjoying yummy soup with their immediate family (they were 16+ hours away from the rest of their family). Christmas Day was celebrated with Santa and a special lunch (or dinner? I can't remember right now). Christmas with my family meant a huge celebration Christmas Eve with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even neighbors. My parents threw a big bash every year and I loved it. Christmas Day was celebrated with Santa, breakfast at my grandparents house and the opening of presents, then a huge late lunch with the same aunts, uncles, cousins as the night before. Christmas night was the most quite part of the whole two days.

Ok, back to my question. Should we even celebrate it at all?? I entertained this for about 30 seconds, thought about what I wrote above, and decided not to celebrate would be ludicrous. Besides, scripture has recorded times of celebration that are unlike anything we can imagine. I have always been impressed with the fact that in the book of Ester, Queen Vashti was striped of her title after she refused to parade herself before King Xerxes guests that had been partying for the past 180 days. 180 days of the finest wine, food, music, entertainment... I mean, seriously, college students, bar hoppers, and movie stars everywhere have nothing on the way they used to party.

So, this makes me feel better about spending a measly 30 days with special decorations in my home, baking cookies for the neighbors, and buying gifts for the one's that I love. All in preparation to celebrate the birth of the single most important person to walk this earth. It's what we do leading up to the party, the finale.

As for gifts, my husband and I have decided to give very few gifts to our children and to each other. As my children grow older, we will continue to have dialogue about Christmas and what we, as followers of Jesus, will be celebrating. We've still invited Santa into our home and asked that he leave one or two small gifts plus a stocking (he left them for my family and they were always a huge hit). But receiving material things will play a small roll in what we'll be celebrating. We'll focus on giving to others and receiving God's gift of Jesus.

Tonight as my two daughters and I were driving around looking at lights, we stopped at a massive moving display of Santa's workshop. There were several little elves, Santa, and lots of toys piled around. My 3 year old looked at the display, admired it, and then said "Mom, where's Baby Jesus?" A smile spread across my face, an ounce of satisfaction, and then I was humbled by her innocent understanding of Christmas.

My "plan" this year was to start an advent calendar and do 25 days of giving. I had high hopes! I made my list, but that was as far as it got. Now that it's the 14th of December, my plan is to write some of them on slips of paper, put them into a glass jar, and we'll have a countdown to Jesus' Birthday Party. [I thought about doing the 12 days of Christmas, but then researched it and found that the 12 Days of Christmas technically start the day after Christmas.] In the years to come, I vow to be more organized in November. My 3 year old and I decided that we wanted to throw Jesus a birthday party and make him a cake. To eat, of course! So that's what we're going to do.

I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas!