What brings a smile to your face as you remember Christmases past? What things do your children request that you did with them when they were small?
In our decorating there are a few items that MUST be put out. Each person has their own personalized Christmas stocking, some of them made by my mother and now the rest that I have made.
Movies and books. I’ve been watching White Christmas since I was 8 and there are books at stories that were always a must.
What’s meaningful about the traditions of Christmas is not how big or expensive the gift but the memories that bring us together, things we share from the heart.
“Teach your children right from wrong, and when they are grown they will still do right.” Proverbs 22:6 CEV
The one tradition that is center stage is the reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2. When I was little, my daddy read it each Christmas morning. When Dave and I married and we took our kids to my parents’ home, my daddy read it. All the years that we had the kids at home Dave has read the Christmas story and even when they were all gone, the two of us sit and open the Bible and read before we do anything else. One year he read the story with our oldest daughter and family via Google Chat.
So many distractions try to rob our traditions, the constants in our lives, the things that bring us hope and peace.
Traditions are important reminders of where we’ve been and what God has done for us. The Jewish people had Passover to remind them of their deliverance from Egypt, something they were told to always remember and to teach their children about God’s goodness and power.
This year I pray that everyone would return to the joy of that first Christmas. The awe, the wonder and that hearts will declare with the angels:
“Then suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host (angelic army) praising God and saying, 14 ‘Glory to God in the highest [heaven], And on earth peace among men with whom He is well-pleased.’
15 When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying one to another, ‘Let us go straight to Bethlehem, and see this [wonderful] thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.’” Luke 2:13-15 AMP
Like the shepherds let’s seek this wonderful thing the Lord has made known to us.