Christian Living

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It is that time of year again. It is time to think about the hustle and bustle of the Christmas Season and try to get through it without injury or at the very least while keeping your sanity. Christmas is a time when families gather, when you spend money that you really may not have and when you want what your neighbors have. It is a time of joy, however, it is increasingly becoming a time of sadness as well.
How do you deal with the Christmas season, when all around you is stuff? Is stuff what makes the season wonderful? I would suggest that it does not. The Christmas season is a season for celebration. It is Jesus’ birthday!! It is a season for rejoicing. It is a season for families. These are the things that make Christmastime fun and memorable. This is the time of year when we can share our faith and people are more likely to be accepting of what we have to say. Christmas should be a simple, sweet time with family and close friends.
One of the things that we as a society struggle with is how to not spoil our children at Christmas. With the wave of ads on TV, the “gimmes” tend to appear more at this time of year than any other. One of the ways to combat this is to take them to homeless shelter and let them work there for a day or so. This will help them see that not everyone is as fortunate as they are. They might even decide to donate money or things to the shelter to help those less fortunate. For us “keeping up with the Joneses” is not an option. We just do not have the money. In fact this year most of our gifts will be homemade. As our circumstances change every year we have to change with them. I will not go into debt for Christmas. If I cannot afford it, then we do not get it. When our kids were younger, we would put things on lay-a-way and get them right before Christmas. However, lay-a-way hardly exists anymore.
Another way to keep from spoiling your kids over the holidays is to pick an ornament off of a tree and buy whatever the ornament has on it for a child from a needy family. Not all families can afford big elaborate Christmases and our kids need to know this. This helps with that and also if gets the focus off of “me” and onto someone else. It also might be fun to make cookies and share with neighbors, and friends.
We us an advent calendar to mark the days until Christmas. This calendar consists of cards with different scriptures on them. On one side is the prophesy about Christ and on the other side is the scripture in which the prophesy is fulfilled. We do this every day in December until Christmas. We also read the Christmas story from the book of Luke on Christmas morning before doing anything else. On Christmas Day we traditionally have new PJ’s to wear and spend the day in them. We open presents and always get a new game, which we play at some point during the day. If we get new movies, they come out as well.
Christmas used to be a time that was fun and we anticipated it all year. Now it seems like more work sometimes than it is worth. We have tried hard to bring back those times of joy and simplicity. This has made us seem a little odd, however it is what works for us and our children are better off because they do not have everything in the world. The Christmas season is a wonderful season, but it is not wonderful because of the stuff it brings. It is wonderful because of the gift that God sent us long ago. This gift was not wrapped in paper and bows. It was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. This is the gift of His son. Jesus came to offer himself as a sacrifice for all of us. This is the very best gift of all.

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