After Christmas

We got through Christmas just fine. I don't know that we started any new traditions, but we enjoyed it. It was peaceful. After thoroughly enjoying Winterlude on Sunday evening we were finally ready to slow down and enjoy the season. Winterlude is a blessed tradition put on by our music staff every year. All three of our music pastors are brilliant keyboardists, so they ask some of our other talented keyboardists to join them in a Christmas piano concert. It is lovely and, like I said, peaceful.

We spent Christmas Eve going to our church's vesper service, delivering blessings baskets, and with some dear friends who invited us over. We had been told about the vesper service every year, but we were never in town to attend. It was short, but quite sweet. We sang Christmas hymns followed by Pastor Jimmy having all of the children (and quite a few parents and teenagers) come up and sit on the platform around him. He told the real Christmas story (as opposed to that Hollywood movie) with the help of one of the "shepherds". The platform was overflowing from end to end. Moriah managed to get fairly close considering the crowd. Afterward the children sang another carol. Then they all descended on the front pews like a swarm of ravenous wolves to collect their Christmas candy. Okay, ravenous wolves is a bit of an exaggeration, but I am trying not to bore you.

After the service we picked up our blessings basket from the gym to deliver to the Mountain Gap Fire Department. It is a long standing tradition of our church to collect cookies from church members, add them to baskets (actually large plastic deli trays) along with some other goodies, and have the church members deliver them on Christmas Eve to those community service people who have to work on Christmas Eve so that we all can enjoy the holidays (i.e. police and fire departments, hospitals and nursing homes). This was our first time to participate. We accompanied some friends on their delivery to a local nursing home and then they joined us in our delivery. We even sang to the men at the fire department.

Then we were off to our friends home for a lovely Christmas Eve dinner and sweet fellowship. Before we sat down to dinner we shared in their families tradition of lighting the Advent candles. This is not something that I grew up with, but was very nice just the same. Dear Mendy makes a delicious venison steak I might add. Her cranberry salad reminded me of my mom's, yum. The best part was just sitting around talking in her living room while the men enjoyed their new electronic entertainment devices and the girls painted their nails over and over. Before we knew it, it was nearly midnight.

Christmas morning we tried to make as much like my mom and dad does it as possible considering that they could not be with us (Dad just had hip surgery and could not travel well). I made Mom's absolutely fabulous egg casserole and frozen fruit cups (THE best thing for cleansing your palette after eggs, cheese and sausage) the night before so all Lainey had to do was pop the casserole in the oven after she woke up. When it was almost done she woke us up and we all gathered in the living room so the girls could open their stockings, including Grandma's homemade ornaments. Mike even had a couple of surprises in his. Then we ate breakfast, followed by reading the Christmas story out of Luke 2. If there was no other Christmas tradition that we repeated this would be the one I would have to keep. I refuse to make Christmas about Santa and the gifts. It is only after we have spent time in God's Word that we allow the gifts to be opened.

When present time arrived we did not allow our girls to just descend on the tree like locusts. Our present time is done in an orderly fashion with each person opening one gift at a time while all the others pay attention. We hope that our children will then understand that the real joy is in the giving of gifts to others and not in the "getting." For instance, Lainey spent a long time knitting a jacket and scarf for Moriah's teddy bear. As pictured below I think Moriah's reaction made the hard work very much worth it for Lainey. I had few surprises for them that they all seemed to enjoy very much. My big blessing had come the day before when my two last minute gifts had actually arrived at the front door. Mike knew about Lainey's and Lainey knew about Mike's so they both assumed that my sneaky answering of the door and locking myself in my room to wrap the gifts was about the gift for the other one. The surprise was so much fun!

Christmas is over, but New Year's is coming. What shall we do?????????