Before I share my little story with you, I would like to thank Janet for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I am very honored to have this opportunity.
The Christmas Season is upon us once again. It is only two short weeks until Christmas Eve. The hustle and bustle of Christmas is all around us as we hurry and scurry about to finish our shopping and plan for all the usual celebrations. I want to draw from some precious memories to stress the importance of keeping the true meaning of Christmas alive as we come to the end of 2011. In order to do so, I am going to travel back into my own childhood and the memories that I cherish from so long ago.
When I was a young girl, Christmas was seldom about giving gifts. If I received one…it was usually an unwrapped and much needed article. I considered myself blessed to receive any present at all. The excitement mounted in our home regardless of the lack of presents. Christmas Eve was the start of the family celebratory season with a midnight church service followed by the special treats of homemade “tortiere”/ meat pie and other Christmas delights.
My siblings and I would tie our stockings to our wrought iron bed and wait for morning with eager anticipation. Sometime during the night, my dad would creep into our bedroom and quietly put one Christmas orange, a few peanuts in the shells, and some hard unwrapped candy at the bottom of our long stockings…stockings that we actually wore and only used in this manner once a year for this special occasion. Even when we were very young, we never talked about Santa Claus. We seemed to always know that it was my dad putting those few items in our stockings that we were so grateful to receive.
To me, Christmas Love is really about family but even more importantly, it is about celebrating the birth of Christ. In doing so, we are sharing in the joy of the holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and that special birth of Our Savior that took place over 2000 years ago.
At times, it is apparent to me that society has taken the Christ out of Xmas and replaced it with many un-Christ-like substitutes…a multitude of X’s. There is much Xtravagance, many unrealistic Xpectations, too much Xtra spending, Xaggerated gift giving, Xcessive eating, Xhaustion, and too many other Xmas activities to mention. In order to truly experience the meaning of Christmas Love, it is necessary to get back to basics and keep Christ in our Christmas festivities by removing as many X’s as possible.
I also feel it is necessary to refocus and redefine what Christmas is all about and what we can personally do to recapture some of the love, joy, and peace of this wondrous season.
Therefore, on that note, I would like to wish each of you a Christmas Season filled…less with the Xploits of consumerism and…more with the Love of Christ. This is what Christmas Love is all about and why I think it is so precious. Wouldn’t you agree?
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