Sweet Christmas!

Does Christmas get a debrief? I think it should.

The girls and I had a compressed Christmas this year. Thanks to some miscommunication between their mom and me, I didn’t have the girls until the Tuesday before Christmas. That gave us two days in which to pack our Christmas festivities.

• Find stocking and stocking stuffers for the dog? Check.
• Drive around town looking at Christmas lights? Check. Thanks, everyone I talked to, for pointing me to the lights at Sunnyside. Truly over the top.
• Bake ninja bread cookies? Check.
• Decorate ninja break cookies? Fail, although rumor has it we’ll break out the decorating icing at tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve get-together with the small group.
• Secure gift from the girls to their mom? Check. (Shopping for a gift for my ex in Bed, Bath, & Beyond with two cranky daughters? Not my favorite part of Christmas.)
• Attend the candlelight Christmas Eve service at church? Check.
• Have a photographically talented friend take an amazing picture of the girls and me in front of a Christmas tree at the Christmas Eve service? Check. Thanks again, Lisa!
• Spend time with Grandma (my mom), who was visiting for the week? Check.
• Read the Christmas story to my kids from the six-year-old’s beautifully written and illustrated story Bible? Check.

Not bad for less than 48 hours.

On that last item, I was convicted by something I heard from Nic Allen, our Family and Children’s Pastor, sometime this month, I’m not sure when. (With all the kid-focused Christmas festivities at church, Nic was everywhere in December.) He asked if our Christmas traditions or Christmas decorations pointed to Jesus during this season in which we are to celebrate His birth.

I had to admit that most of the Christmas festivities in my house revolve around the fun aspects of the secular American version of Christmas: Santa, Rudolph, that darn Elf on the Shelf, Christmas lights, Christmas ornaments, giving and receiving gifts, spending time with family, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but if our two days of Christmas preparations were a reality show, would the audience at home have any clue that we were celebrating Jesus’ birth?

Hearing this message from Nic, I thought of the Bible I gave my six-year-old a couple of years ago. It’s the Jesus Storybook Bible, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago. (Just Jago.) The book’s tagline is “Every story whispers his name,” and it’s a good tagline. Lloyd-Jones has retold Old and New Testament stories so that they all point to Jesus, fitting together like a puzzle with the Christmas story at the very center. (Bonus: The illustrations by Jago, Just Jago, are completely charming.) Why I don’t read to my girls from this book every night, I don’t know. But I made sure to read them the Christmas story on Christmas Eve this year.

“And there, in the stable, amongst the chickens and the donkeys and the cows, in the quiet of the night, Good gave the world his wonderful gift. The baby that would change the world was born. His baby Son.”

On balance, I know we still had a pretty secular Christmas. But I also know my girls heard the Christmas story, and I hope they took it to heart.

Next year, I’m going to add a Nativity scene to our Christmas decorations. I grew up in the Church of Christ, which traditionally doesn’t celebrate Christmas because if we focus on Christ’s birth one day of the year that means we’re not focusing on it the rest of the year and we can’t have that can we so let’s not mention Christmas at church definitely not leave that to the Baptists. My parents didn’t buy into that Christmas-is-just-another-day nonsense, but we still didn’t have a Nativity scene at home, and I grew up thinking it was some kind of Catholic thing, like worshiping Mary. Now, however, I see the purpose (or, at least, a purpose) of having a Nativity scene as part of one’s Christmas decor: It communicates visually to young eyes that Jesus’ birth is an important part of Christmas.

Now I just need to find a good Nativity scene at one of these after-Christmas sales.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas this year. And thanks for reading my dad blog, as infrequently as I’ve updated it this year. It’s a privilege to share a few slices of my life with friends near and far.