A Christmas Card
from our house to yours:
“… She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus,
for He will save His people from their sins.”
Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken
by the Lord through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and she shall bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel,”
which translated means, “God with us.”
I still cringe when I remember the year my parents decided to mess with family tradition. We’d always had a real Christmas tree, illuminated with those large, old-fashioned lights (now considered the height of retro-fashion!) and hung with lead-filled crinkled “icicles” (long banned by the EPA). But the year I turned ten, my mother decided it was time to update our decorations.
She and my dad went to our local Christmas tree lot, picked out a tall misshapen tree, and had it flocked. Spray-on flocking was quite the rage in the mid-60’s. (At least they stuck with white “snow” rather than opting for the very trendy blue, lavender or pink.) Hauled home in our pick-up, the tree went into our high-ceilinged living room. There it was spotlighted with a floodlight. Finally, gold balls were nestled in the fluffy white branches—tiny ornaments at the very top, giant shiny spheres on the sturdy branches at the base. I’m sure the tree was beautiful, with its avant-garde shape and mono-thematic decorations. I, for one, hated it.
It’s pervasive. Whatever our faith, whatever our musical preferences, at this time of year we are all subjected to an unending deluge of “Holiday” music. We either love it or hate it, but it’s awfully hard to escape it.
As I was standing in line at the market recently, waiting to check out and listening to yet another version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I started to consider: what if most people learned their facts about Christmas from the lyrics of popular Christmas music?
Just think of how they’d describe the first Christmas. It all took place in a little town called Bethelem, in the middle of the night, in winter….
Today is December 15. Today is my birthday.
December can be a hard month to have a birthday. It seems the whole world is focused on Christmas, and your personal special day gets lost in the lights and tinsel. Instead of having a birthday party, it’s more likely you find yourself at someone else’s holiday gathering. With all that delicious holiday baking enticing you, you feel guilty eating your birthday cake—if you get one at all. And balloons just don’t look right next to a Christmas tree.
So what’s a December baby to do? Adjust that old attitude!
The whole world is focused on Christmas? That’s great! The crucial point here is realizing that it’s not all about me. It’s about Jesus. My attention needs to be on Him, not myself. Perhaps having a birthday near Christmas will help me learn that lesson sooner than if I’d been born in July.
Just in case you haven’t noticed, Christmas is only two weeks away. I’ve already posted some suggestions to help you in your holiday gift giving. In that November article, I mentioned how last year we had “given” my husband a goat that would actually go to a needy family in the Dominican Republic.
Since then, I have done some research into various organizations worthy of your donations. Some have gift catalogs, such as the one we ordered from last year. You can “purchase” anything from carrot seeds to medical supplies to clean water for a village. Others just accept donations. You can designate a specific fund, or opt for “where the need is greatest.” They may offer to send you a gift receipt that you can wrap and place under the tree. We like to make our own at home—our family is big on word-processed scrolls, tied up with a red ribbon.
Large nonprofits such as World Vision and Compassion International have stellar reputations, and you won’t go wrong sending them a donation. But since they are familiar to most people, I’m going to introduce you to three of my favorite smaller ministries. These are Godly people doing Godly work, but without the big budgets and big names.
One of my earliest memories is making these cookies with my mom. There was always a batch for Christmas, and I would spend hours and hours decorating them with different colored frosting, creating works of art that were always proclaimed “too pretty to eat.” But eat them we did. First we ate the “oops-es” and then the less perfect ones, and finally the rest. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without a day spent in the kitchen, covered with flour.
When our kids were small (see photo), of course we had to make the same cookies. It has now become a family Christmas tradition.
These cookies are also a really great excuse to collect cookie cutters. I have dozens, and am always looking for another good one. A good cutter has no narrow spots, where the cookies usually break. It isn’t so big that it swallows up all the dough. And it’s a fun shape for decorating. I even still have the original cutters I used as a preschool-aged child—the horse, rabbit, dog, fir tree, circle (with crinkle edges), star (also crinkled), bell, and especially the crescent moon, whose shape was perfect for fitting between all the other cutouts.
What about you? What are your favorite Christmas cookies? Is there a special recipe that your family always makes for the holidays?
In our culture, Christmas has turned into the biggest shopping spree and gift fest of the year. When most people think about Christmas, they think about presents. While gift-giving isn’t mandatory, it is an expectation in most families. Given that fact, how can exchanging gifts honor God?
Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than receive.” When I was a child, I would have disagreed, but now that I’m the primary gift-chooser in our family, I find that I get really excited about finding the perfect present for someone I love. I get even more excited watching them open the wrapping. We honor God in our giving when we give with a cheerful heart.
The Christmas decorations have been up in the stores for months, ads are playing on TV, and a suffocating feeling of being overwhelmed is beginning to engulf me. I feel like Scrooge. It’s not that I’m against Christmas—far from it—but I’m very much fed up with the commercialized substitute our culture feeds us. It makes me want to crawl under a rock and stay there until January.
Every year I rebel against spending money we don’t have, baking things I shouldn’t eat, and the self-imposed pressure to decorate the house—knowing I’ll have to put it all away again a few weeks later. Yet I eventually find myself doing all those things anyway.
Compost 