Taking a holiday from what?

The final lighting of the middle candle on Christmas Eve!

Our kids in their Christmas p.j.'s just before going to Santa's Wonderland.

Oh, how I love the holidays. For so many reasons. I feel like this year has been one of our best Christmases ever! Excluding one trip to Wal-Mart that will go down in history as one of the worst two hours of my life, this holiday has been restful and worshipful. That's a difficult combination to find in a house like ours.
If you're a student, Christmas BREAK is definitely a break! It's the sweetest time of year (unless you're one of those insane in the membrane people who take a mini-mester nightmare in December) where you have NO work hanging over your head. No paper looming, no tests, no reading, nothing. I remember that feeling. It's an unparalleled time of relaxation in your educational career. Enjoy it now, young friends!
When you're a grown-up, and you have a grown-up job, you might get time off. When I was a teacher, I vividly remember my break. It was pre-kids for me. So I recall staying home in my P.J.'s and baking Christmas goodies all day, watching Christmas movies, while Rusty was at work. It was so relaxing, and a blissful break from a fun but very stressful job.
When you're a Mom, there are not the same kind of holidays from our "work." My job as a domestic engineer is managing and cleaning my home while also trying to spend meaningful time with the kids. Does anyone else feel the tension in that challenge? I actually wrote "Do fun stuff with the kids" on my white board to-do list, because it's too easy to get caught up with laundry, cleaning, baking, cooking, and forget those little people who want to play games and do creative things. I want to do that too! As a homeschool Mom, any break we take from school is a time to clean. I don't have time to clean out my refrigerator or wash and scrub the walls on a daily school day basis. So that's what I've been trying to achieve. It's not the same as a Christmas break, you know what I mean? Christmas break can be awesome, or it can be chaos. I personally wither spiritually in the chaos. This year has been so good and here's a few reasons why.

So what do we break from?
This year, this was our question. Even though I have been cleaning, baking, cooking, I have also had restful, worshipful, fun time at home. Rusty and I have been thinking for weeks now about how to "holiday" without taking a holiday from things that matter most.
Our men's group met earlier in December to talk about leading their families spiritually during the Advent season without taking a holiday from spiritual things.(I'm so thankful for these guys!!!) Sometimes, when we get out of our routines, we inadvertently holiday from things like prayer, time in the Word, spiritual disciplines. Not things done out of legalistic rules, but things we do to maintain a close relationship with the Lord. The fuel we need spiritually, that keeps me going, keeps me focused on Him and not me. How quickly the focus can shift back to me when I forget to feed myself spiritually! I don't know about you, but I need His Word, I need to pray, I need to be thankful to Him, I need HIM!
So we're learning, when we vacation or have a holiday of some kind, we have to intentionally take breaks from some things. Some kinds of work. School work, which is kind of hard for me, but honestly, I've enjoyed it. Rusty's work. He needs the break. Of course our home, house work is still here, but it can be a joy to do together! We can take a holiday from BLOGGING which I obviously have. A break from FACEBOOK, which I pretty much have as well. We've tried to break from things that take up our time and energy.

Adding Advent and 40 Days of Prayer
I love that our church is in the middle of our 40 days of prayer and fasting during this season. It may seem like an odd time to do this as a church, especially as more than half of our church just left town to go home for Christmas break! But I think it's helped me focus on what I need the most! I hope it has for our students as well.
We also have done Advent family worship this Advent season. If you're like me, and grew up Baptist, you maybe are not familiar with Advent. But in the past few years, our family has taken advantage of this time of preparation for Christmas. No longer will we walk into a Christmas Eve service, trying to focus for the first time that season on it's meaning and full purpose. But it can also be hard to be diligent during busy December to our Advent worship. I love that Rusty didn't allow us to break from Advent, even during a bad virus we passed around and when we travelled! (We found Advent will travel. Flashlights and nightlights make good makeshift Advent candles!) Rusty kept us focused on the reason for this holiday. This Advent season with the kids was awesome! Even little Treston knew the names of the candles, and could answer questions during our Advent family worship times. It didn't always go perfectly, mind you. Far from it. Rusty and I laughed about some of the "Advents gone wrong" moments. I wish I had clips from our Advent bloopers to show you. If our whole life was video taped and we could go back and watch the highlights and bloopers, the Bacak clips would be very entertaining. Things like "Hark the Herod angels sing"...Justus was slightly confused on that song. But I love singing Christmas songs for worship, and what group of little boys doesn't love family worship with FIRE! That's like the ultimate for them.

Rest and Fun
We've enjoyed some amazing rest time this past week. Rusty got two days off from work, which has been AMAZING! (He's been on call the whole time, but still home with us, which ROCKS!) It's been restful, having both of us home, enjoying the kids, working in the house together, and doing fun stuff as a family! We did some just-for-fun stuff, and stuff that was meaningful. It's my hope we're making snapshots of memories for our kids. This year, we watched the movie "The Nativity Story" together as a family, and I think that's our new Christmas tradition. That was really neat, and brought the story to life for all of us. Again this year, we went to the nursing home on Christmas Eve to visit our beloved Mr. Gruner and some other residents. That makes our Christmas hopefully as much as it makes theirs. On Christmas Eve night, we bathe the kids and then they come out all drippy in their towels, to find new Christmas p.j.'s that have magically appeared in their stockings. (Okay, they know it's me.) They put on their new p.j.'s and we actually make hot chocolate for everyone and brought along the hot drink dispenser for refills, take blankets, and get in the van for a drive-thru of Santa's Wonderlands lights. (This plan was great last year, but this year Emma, who didn't wear shoes, had to find a port-o-potty for an emergency potty break. She had to put on her Dad's size 12 shoes to go in, since the rest of us were barefoot or wearing house shoes. Yuck!) We came home for our Christmas meal, Advent, and sit by the fire time. We also like to go to the movies together on Christmas night. While we watched a painful kids movie for us parents this year, the kids so enjoyed it. We've hit the amazing long awaited stage with our kids where we can all sit in a movie together. That's fun for all of us! I made some yummy Christmas meals, that were pretty darn easy as well. I think I'll post those later this week. Oh, and we made gingerbread men, which were very fun and messy to make with the kids, and fun to decorate, but it was my first time to make them and I will definitely be tweaking the recipe. They were a little too "spicy." We got to visit with Rusty's family, and even Treston's birth family, and the Seay family gathering is coming this week. This is all fun family time for us.

"Fail to plan and we plan to fail"
I think that's become one of my life mottos. It's not the Bible or anything, but it just seems to ring true in my life. We've learned more this year about not "breaking" from spiritual things while we're out of our routine, and planning has definitely contributed to that. Rusty and I took a date night to discuss this early in the month, and I think the preparation for this has made a difference. In some previous years, I think we have done this all wrong, due to lack of preparation and intentionality. We would end up frustrated with the kids, irritated with the chaos, and our time off seemed fruitless. But we are learning, year by year, and this year has been so good, and I'm so amazingly thankful! Around this house, it's still Christmas until New Year's, so Merry Christmas friends!

A Very Bacak Christmas: Highlights and slideshow

Hope your Christmas was wonderful! Here's our recap.
Just a few Christmas highlights:
1. Being home! We love visiting family, but it's just so good to be at home in our own beds and where life is normal for Christmas.

2. Christmas Eve Night- we bathed all the kids, and they came out of the bath to find their Christmas p.j.'s hanging on the hearth for them. Four naked kids donned cute new p.j.'s, slippers, and we got in the van to do our Santa's Wonderland drive thru! It was great!
We came home and had such a wonderful, easy Christmas Eve dinner! We had seasoned pork loin and asparagus, which Rusty grilled, and I made mashed potatoes and rolls. I melted some seedless raspberry jam for raspberry sauce over the pork loin, and it was all amazing, and amazingly easy!
We did Advent, and finally lit that inside candle. It was very special and memorable!

3. Monkey Bread for breakfast. As you can see, as usual, it's all about the food for me. White Chicken Chili for lunch.

4. We opened gifts and Christmas threw up all over my living room. I wondered, as I was gathering up wrapping paper, when did I make the switch from the person ripping open gifts to the person gathering up the paper? That's the true mark of adulthood.

5. Staying in our p.j.'s. Yep, til almost 5pm. Then we went to the nursing home we love to visit and had a good time there with the old folks, especially our sweet Mr. Gruner. What a blessing to be with them on Christmas!

6. We went to the movies. It was fun family time, but I'll tell you, I think "Tale of Desperaux" is not worth the money. The kids liked it, but Rusty and I felt like it was about 4 hours long.

7. I feel so blessed! God has truly rained down on me blessings that I don't deserve. I am so thankful, most of all for a Savior!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Super Thankful for a Savior

I told y'all I'm doing the one-year-Bible reading plan, right? We started November 1st. I just read through Leviticus, and let me tell you...it's some weird stuff. One day's reading will cover skin rashes and bodily discharges and that kind of sicked me out. However, it's given me a unique perspective for Christmas this year. These are the things that really stood out to me:

1. The wages of sin is death. Yep, I stole that from Romans. But you see that for real in the Old Testament. It has been confusing to me in the past to be reading along, and see that someone has committed a sin (that might seem small to me) and then poof! God strikes them dead. What? Why? How? That seems like an over-reaction, Lord! A bit unjust. But this is the truth: We deserve death for our sins. We don't deserve anything else. Just death. We're not entitled to anything from God. We're not entitled to a life of happiness, ease, flowers and sunshine. We're entitled to...you guessed it...death. BUT! God, in all his goodness, had mercy on us and made a way for us. He offers atonement for our sins. Jesus. We didn't deserve it, and we never could. The fact that He saved us by no merit of our own, that is actually unjust. We don't get what we deserve. God's wrath would actually be just. This is a basic principle we learn when we're young. Every kids who was ever in AWANAS, G.A.'s, R.A.'s, or any Sunday School class has learned Romans 6:23
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." But reading the OT makes this real for me.

2. God is specific. He gave them unbelievably specific instructions. He didn't deliver a million people from slavery, lead them into the desert of all places, and tell them to figure it out. No. He gave them unbelievably specific instructions on how to manage the people, how to feed them, how to worship, how to make their sacrifices, and how to avoid diseases and maintain sanitary conditions. As I'm reading the rules on skin rashes, I'm thinking 'Good gracious, it was a real bummer when you got a rash.' I mean, you have to live outside the camp for a while, and then you have to shave off all the hair on your body, including your eyebrows, and make sacrifices, and...I can't imagine all the laundry that would have built up for me at home by the time I did all that. But my Mom helped shed some light on this by pointing out, these were a million people in the desert. God knew exactly what they didn't know about the spread of disease, unsanitary water, unsanitary food preparation, and keeping order. His instructions leave little room for error. How gracious of Him! When he instructs them on sexual sin, it was confusing to me that He didn't just say "just have relations with your wife" and leave it at that. But instead, He says "Don't have relations with your neighbor, your sister, your neighbor's sister, your aunt, your aunt's slavegirls, your slavegirls, your aunt's neighbor's slavegirls..." you get the picture. But then I got the picture of how specific I have to be with my kids. If my little ones are going to use markers, just saying "only write on the paper!" is not good enough. I need to specifically say "don't write on the table, don't write on your clothes, don't write on the floor, don't write on your brother, and don't color in your hair." If I don't, garuntee you, one or all of those things will happen. Until my kids grow up more, they need constant specificity. God knew the Israelites needed that too.

3. I'm super thankful for a Savior! Our minds are too numb to the fact that Jesus paid for our sins and we don't have to. Maybe it's because some of us have known that fact all our lives. My four-year-old knows that very well in his head. But good gracious, when you read through what it took for them under the Old Covenant to try to atone for their sins with sacrifices, it's overwhelming. And it makes me a little squeamish. Reading the blood and guts parts over my morning coffee made me a little ill. But it also made me enormously grateful! We live under the New Covenant. Jesus has already paid the price. This is why He came. This was God's beautiful and mysterious plan from the beginning of time. This was the reason He came to earth as a helpless infant that holy night. We deserve death, but he got it instead. We deserve God's wrath, but he endured the cross. For so long, they had to stave off God's wrath with their sacrifices and the keeping of the law. It's exhausting to read it all. But His plan was good and enduring, and He chose to save us and cover our sins with Jesus' blood. I'm very in awe of that big picture plan this Christmas as I do these readings.

So as always, I'm thankful for God's Word. I'm even thankful for the parts I don't understand and never will on this earth. It builds my faith. If our God was so small that we could understand Him fully with our finite minds, He would not be God. I can live in awe of a great God who is beyond my imagination! This passage has summed it up best for me. Rom 11:33-36
3 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
35 "Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
NIV

Advent Starts Today!

The Christmas season has begun! Our house is massively well-lit. My husband lives for Christmas lights! You can see our house from 20 miles back...we are not conspicuous folks. We started our decorating time with a devotional. The world was dark for hundreds of years before Christ's birth. There were no prophets, nothing for a long, long time. It was dark, spiritually. And then a BRIGHT LIGHT appeared. What an exciting time!
Advent...not exactly a Baptist thing...at least not in this century. Why not? As we re-think how we do Christmas, I know we desperately need to keep our focus on Christ. That's what Advent is about. Focusing our attention on the meaning and the expectation of Christmas. We have never done Advent all out before, and I'm really excited. Heather put a link on her blog for this Advent devotional that we are also going to use. Rusty looked it over, and thought it was good. It's not for this year, so you need to modify the dates. If you start late, then start late! But I think this is going to be awesome. Since we are already doing family worship at night, it seems much more normal to do this together as a family. I decided that during Advent, we would eat dinner at our dining room table. That is special and very different! We hardly ever eat in there! It's my expensive, easily damaged, antique table. I love that table. I think it's going to feel really special to light the candles in there and have dinner in there. I want to make this season special and set apart...worshipful.
If I wasn't still feeling stinky (virus over Thanksgiving) I would take a picture of our Advent wreath and candles I'm so proud of. But that would take effort and I feel like going to bed.
I hope this season is full of worship for all of us believers. I hope for those of you who don't know Christ personally, it will be a time you really think about Him and His place in your life.
It's all about Him! Merry Christmas season!

De-commercializing Christmas

I thought I'd continue the discussion about changing how we do Christmas. I'm still thinking through this practically, so I do a lot of thinking out loud on this blog. And I really, REALLY have enjoyed your personal stories and tips you've shared. Keep them coming! I will share some suggestions and sites to go to for them in this post.
So just to recap, why are we changing how we do Christmas? Not because giving gifts is evil or material things are wrong. I don't want anyone to feel condemned by these posts! This is a personal journey for our family, and the extended Seay family, as we give more globally to those in need and realize how excessive our lives are. My brother Brian is in the process of adopting from Africa. All of my brothers are heavily involved in organizations like Compassion and Living Water. The ripple effect is felt in our family. It touches us at the core of our relationship to God and it must change us.
So we've decided to give more handmade gifts, spend less money on Christmas gifts, and give cheerfully and thoughtfully, but less from the wallet. We are joining so many others in Advent Conspiracy, so that money will go to Living Water, doing amazing work for the gospel and saving lives!
A LOT of people complain about the commercialism and hectic, carnal season that Christmas has become. But what are our ideas to reclaim Christmas? I want to not complain, but generate change. We can buy a "Jesus is the reason for the season" lapel pin and wear it everyday, but what does that mean? I feel an urgency in knowing, because my kids are in their formative years, and we are laying the foundation for who they are and what they think. I also desperately want to please the Lord with my heart's intentions. I want to do this right. Mainly, I want my kids to think back on Christmas, and remember worship and rest and enjoyment and reflection, and not immediately go to presents. When we talk about "doing Christmas" that usually means presents. I know that our propensity to love money and be greedy is great, and God abhorrs it according to the Bible, so I want to guard against that in our family.
But how?
First, we are thinking a lot about what we are making for people we love, and then putting time and energy into those gifts. It only takes one day of madness Christmas shopping (where people will literally sell their children to you and eat yours for the cheap TV/DVD players on special at Wal-Mart...what a way to celebrate Jesus) and a moment for me to whip out my credit card to check someone off the list of MUST BUYS for Christmas gifts. Some of you love to shop. I DO NOT. So this is a much more expressive way for us to give.
Secondly, two things we have prohibited.
1. Looking at catalogues and commercials. The catalogues are coming in the mail daily, and they feed my kids' desires for things they don't need. I have one child in particular who is obsessed with catalogues, because his greatest sin tendency is the love of money (stuff!) and he struggles with this constantly. (I also have children who are oblivious to stuff, so we have to really know our kids). I have to be wise in what I let him look at and think about. If I didn't limit things like commercials and catalogues, he would lie awake all night and think about the things he wants and talk about it constantly. The desire for something new can never be satisfied. That's how greed works. So I have outlawed catalogues. They have to go in the trash immediately. We zip past commercials on DVR. We should know enough by now to avoid temptation and stay far away from the things that draw us into sin.

2. We don't allow Christmas lists. This is something I heard from Heather a few years ago, and it makes perfect sense. We ask our kids to make a greed list at Christmas. We know they need nothing, and some of them can't even think of what they want because they are so saturated with possessions. For some reason, we think it's cute when they're little. (I don't know why.) But it's not cute for long. And I would only be feeding the sin issue if I asked them to make a list of things they want for Christmas. I am taking notice of things they like and are intersted in. I let them tell me those things from time to time. Jax is wanting a basketball and a skateboard, and I plan to go to Play It Again Sports (a sports resale shop) for that. Emma is devouring books, so I plan to find as many used books online as I can for Christmas. Justus is into dressing up. This is his latest superhero costume...

This costume he put together is a bandana, which cost $1 at Wal-Mart, and then a hand egg-beater, also probably found at a dollar store. For some reason my kids love that hand mixer! You just never know! They like that and my eyelash curler best of all "toys" in the house! Treston...who knows. Food and tennis balls. That would be plenty for him.
Here's some more ideas I have.

1. Winkflash is running a special on photo calendars for only $7.77! That's pretty good! Parents and grandparents love that stuff!

2. Go to my sister-in-law, Liz's blog. She had some great stuff posted about using Modge Podge to make these really cool wooden pictures! They turned out so cool! She gives step-by-step instructions. She's super creative. Check out all her ideas. They are also into Advent Conspiracy.

3. Someone else's blog talked about giving the gift of presence or shared activities. They gave a day at the zoo to one of their kids, or other activities that your family loves. If that is someone you know's love language, that would be a wonderful gift to give! Make positive sure that you follow through, and give specifics on the when and where.

4. Food. This is my love language (not actually in the Gary Chapman book, but if I were to write a book, I would add it as the sixth one). I like to bake and cook for people, and I think people enjoy it. (At least I hope so.) I mentioned before I gave meals that I froze for my parents to use whenever they needed them. I also make homemade salsa, candy, truffles, banana bread, etc. I think this is a labor of love, and everybody likes food, right?

5. Someone mentioned to me the other day as we discussed this, they choose to make a big deal out of birthday gifts rather than Christmas gifts, because birthdays are meant to be about celebrating that person's birth, and Christmas is supposed to be about celebrating Jesus. We love birthdays and half birthdays around here, so I liked the idea of making people feel special on those days especially.

So this doesn't mean we won't do gifts. We will. But we will spend less and there will be less fanfare.
The questions we really want to ask ourselves is "How can we make Christmas about Christ, and how can we imitate Him?"
Going into debt at Christmas time with unnecessary spending probably wouldn't do.
I do believe this will look different from person to person, family to family. I don't think we can follow a formula on Christmas, and be right. I know it's about our hearts and our willingness to go against the flow in effort to please Him more. But just because I'm thinking outloud for us on this blog doesn't mean your Christmas will look like ours. I hope we are all challenged, though, to examine our hearts' and where our focus is, 365 days of the year. We want to make our lives all about Him, all of the time.

Christmas...thinking it through

I know, it's a little early to talk about Christmas.
But it's not. Christmas time sneaks up on us, and suddenly, it's December, and there's a trillion things to do, host, shop for, wrap, bake, and oh, by the way, worship the God of the universe.
That doesn't seem to work for me.
So for the past few years, we've been really thinking through the CHRISTmas season, and trying to make it more and more of what it should be.
Every family has different ideas on how to do this.
But one that I have to throw out there: spend less. SPEND LESS!
My brother, Chris, started a beautiful campaign called Advent Conspiracy with Living Water (an organization we love that drills wells all over the world bringing clean drinking water and life to whole villages of people, and sharing the Gospel of Jesus, bringing real life at the same time! Read more about it on their website.) My brothers have been heavily involved with Living Water, and they are on to something.
This short video will get you thinking about how we do Christmas here in America.
So Rusty and I are committing to spending less, and giving more to further the Kingdom of Christ. We are going to be making hand-made, thoughtful gifts to our friends and family, keeping it simple with our kids, and giving money in it's place to Living Water. Last year, I made meals for my parents and put them in their freezer as their Christmas gift. They both work full-time, so they appreciated that. I've made fleece tie blankets for family members, and they loved it! There are so many things we can do that cost less, and mean more.
We have already started talking about it with our kids in preparation for this season. In fact, my kids loved this video. It inspired them.
Making homemade gifts will take time and planning on my part. Would it be easier to run around like a crazy woman the day after Thanksgiving and buy a bunch of junk instead? Probably. But if I start now and plan carefully, my kids and I will enjoy this much more, and it will mean more on our end. Will people feel jipped by us on Christmas day? I don't know. But it only costs $1000.00 in some parts of the world to bring an entire village clean water and give them life, so I'm thinking they won't be feeling jipped. Most of us spend much more than a thousand dollars on Christmas gifts yearly.
Most importantly, we have to break free from the greed that grabs hold of us and put all our love and worship on the King. Ephesians 4 says that a greedy person is really an idolator, loving the things of this world. You know how God felt about idol worship? Read the Old Testament! It's generally frowned upon! And no matter how we dress it up, the way we spend and expect material things in the name of Jesus' birthday is greed in it's purest form.
There's nothing wrong with gifts. There's nothing wrong with giving as an expression of love. But there is something heinous about the way we go into debt at Christmas time just to keep up with the expectation of excessive gift giving.
So let's re-focus...check out this video, and look into Advent Conspiracy. This is something your whole church can commit to, and make an eternal difference.
Also, something I'm doing, is thinking ahead to the things that stress me out in December, and trying to pre-emptively accomplish those things early.
For example, a mass mail-out of Christmas cards. That gets me every time. So I've already ordered my early holiday photo cards and will send them out in advance. (BTW, Winflash.com has a great deal running right now!)
My hope is that this season is less about stress...less about stuff...and more about worship, rest, and reflection. I want more than anything to honor Christ in that way.
If you have any other ideas on how you and your family do this, let me know! I want to hear them! (OH, and my sister-in-law, Liz, who is brilliant with gifts, has some great ideas on her blog and recommends Martha Stewart's new holiday magazine for awesome creative ideas.)

Peeling back the layers of Christmas

We love Christmas. LOVE IT!
If you didn't know that, you've obviously never seen our home during the Christmas season. We celebrate Christmas big!
But there are things about the Christmas season that many people dread. To name a few...
1. Commercialism
2. An over-booked month
3. Spending too much
4. Shopping
5. Greediness
So Rusty and I have been searching for the way to de-stress, de-clutter, and de-secularize Christmas for our family.
Our goal is just that Christ would be the focus, and we would truly worship and celebrate during this season!
So we decided to spend less. I think we've made that decision each year for several years now, and we're starting to get the hang of it. We are giving more than ever as a family, and spending less and less on stuff. I don't say that to bring glory to us in any way, but to give all the glory to God for teaching us how to give Him more glory with all of our resources.
Shopping for parents, grandparents, my kids' 13 first cousins, and close friends overwhelms me! So this year I decided to get the bulk of our Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving. This has been GREAT! I feel NO STRESS right now about shopping, which is miraculous. I have never liked to shop, and shopping with four small children is a very real form of torture. I bought several things on-line, and Rusty and I did a lot of it while on date nights. Even Wal-Mart is enjoyable when I go with Rusty on a date night. It was even fun!
We are being very careful in guarding our children's hearts from the "Gimmies", the greedy spirit we find acceptable for children to have at Christmas time. We instead are focusing our fun and creative energy on what they are giving rather than getting. They have told us one thing that they want for Christmas and that's more than enough. They need NOTHING! They have a playroom full of toys! God is teaching us contentment and thankfulness, and I just can't see that we can have those things, commanded in scripture, when we have a long list of things we want and will be disappointed if we don't get on Christmas morning. That definitely shifts the focus off of Christ. Gifts are not bad! But wanting things to the point of discontentment or lack of thankfulness is, for sure! My kids are responding beautifully to this so far. I am so proud of them! They are so excited about getting each other special little gifts.
Another thing we do to de-stress Christmas is stay home for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Being with extended family is definitely one of our favorite things about the holiday, but travelling is difficult with lots of kids, and stressful even under the very best circumstances. We decided a long time ago that we would go to our own church Christmas Eve service and our kids would wake-up in our house on Christmas Day. Christmas day is very relaxing! We have many traditions to keep, like eating monkey bread for breakfast and Christmas Chili for lunch. We stay in our pajamas all day and play! It's wonderful! We celebrate Christmas with both sides of our family either before or after Christmas, which works best anyway when you are coordinating so many family schedules.
We are not anti-cultural traditions when it comes to the holidays. We really enjoy a lot of the Christmas-y food, movies, decorations, etc. But in everything, we remind our kids that everything special about the Christmas season points to the reason this season is so special. Did you have to read that sentence twice? I mean Christmas is and should be a BIG deal to us as Christians, because Jesus is everything to us. We ought to let people know that we celebrate and worship during this season in many fun, festive, and even reverent ways because it's a big, fat, stinkin' deal!!! We have a cross as our tree topper, and I love that because Jesus' birth points us towards Jesus' death and resurrection, and that should bring us to our knees in thankfulness for our Savior! As we put the Christmas lights on the tree, we talk about how Jesus is the light of the world. When we put the cross on, we talk about the significance of the cross at Christmas. And when we were done decorating the tree this year, Emma went and put baby Jesus at the bottom. (See picture in the post below.)
So we are trying to pull back all the layers of junk on our Christmas and make it truly enjoyable and worshipful. For each family, I do believe that is going to look different. We must examine what draws our hearts and eyes away from the Lord. That's going to be different for each adult, and for each child. I hope that our kids see Rusty and I fixed on Jesus during the Christmas season, and not stressed-out and too busy.
Hope this season is off to a good start for all of you! I treasure every day that our Christmas tree and lights are up. I adore sitting in the living room with the lights off and the tree on. I also love the new p.j.'s the kids get on Christmas Eve, the Christmas candy and bread baking I do, and I like driving through the lights at Santa's Wonderland with the kids. We already went once this year, and Treston, a man of few words, kept saying "Wow! Wow!" That's fun!
What are things that you and your family love at Christmas?