It's a fight to try to go against the norm. Some days I truly feel like it is a battle we will never win. If I am being honest.
I just have to keep trying though, because I know the truth. I know that what we as a nation and as the world have turned Christmas into is completely jacked up and wrong.
Christmas isn't about the gifts or the festivities. It's supposed to be about Christ and Christ alone.
Does that mean we don't do fun things...no. We do. We choose though to make it about Christ. The fact that HE came down from heaven to save a wretched sinner like me is something to celebrate and be thankful for.
I am not meaning to get on a soap box, and I know that there are those of you who might disagree with me. And that's ok. We are just doing what we feel is important for our family to be able to focus on Christ and not ourselves. Are we doing it perfectly...nope, far from it actually. We are failing daily, but we keep on striving for Christ to be the center of our home.
We want SK and EJ to know that Christmas is about Christ and not about us. It isn't about presents or Santa or the lights or the movies...
I wish I could write more eloquently about my heart behind this. I hope I don't come across as arrogant and a know it all or a goody-two-shoes. That isn't my heart. I know we aren't perfect and are jacked up people.
I do love what a friend recently posted on facebook regarding her family's thoughts on Christmas (esp. talking about Santa). I wanted to post it here, not only to share, but also to have it to look back on for myself. She writes so beautifully as I wish I could :) and I am so glad she shared.
There is a secret to Christmas. And, dare I say it, the secret doesn’t involve Santa. The secret takes you to a place deeper, supremely magical and delightful. It is midnight blue, it is glorious, it is still and quiet; and it profoundly changes you. Are Evan and I the scrooges of Christ
mas? Our children know that Santa isn’t real! But, you know what? So did I. And it was beautiful. The beauty lasted until...today. It didn’t end when I became a certain age. The intimacy of a baby Savior born, the beauty of angels, the quiet of the deep starlit night never seemed so poignant - so mysterious and magical - as Christmas. As a little girl I put on play clothes and imagined angels appearing to Mary and the shepherds; I imagined a baby in a manger; I imagined what it was like to be wrapped in the lowing of cattle in the still, night air. I also pretended to BE Mary and an angel. I adored the melodies. And now I see it. Was it not a child’s meditation on the birth of our Savior?
Our mythological Santa Claus has warped Christmas into some kind of horrible orgy of presents, and traffic jams and harried mothers. He has stolen away the deep, deep magic of Aslan, (excuse me), God. So don’t lament my children their absence of belief in Santa. They’ll take their childhood play, music and imagination with them into adolescence and adulthood. They’ll learn that it is not pretend, but that it is True. It will remain after they put aside childish things. It will remain after doubting and testing. They’ll come full circle into the wonder of Christmas. They’ll look back to their childhood and reflect that their play was deeper, the arts deeper and the traditions deeper than cultural whims; that it is steeped in something solid and beyond the imagination. It will whisper to them in the wintry sky as they wonder as they wander out under the sky. Because it does to me. And it did to my dad. And it has done that to generations.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that we have a tendency to idealize Christ’s birth. I understand that Mary was probably shunned, the animals probably stunk and the Magi weren’t present on Christmas day. But what is all of that from Heaven’s perspective? I bet Mary considers all of that nothing compared to the unimaginable goings-on in Heaven at that time. So I figure, we will learn just how profound and beautiful and tantamount that event really was. And it will blow anything I imagined as a child out of the water.
Our mythological Santa Claus has warped Christmas into some kind of horrible orgy of presents, and traffic jams and harried mothers. He has stolen away the deep, deep magic of Aslan, (excuse me), God. So don’t lament my children their absence of belief in Santa. They’ll take their childhood play, music and imagination with them into adolescence and adulthood. They’ll learn that it is not pretend, but that it is True. It will remain after they put aside childish things. It will remain after doubting and testing. They’ll come full circle into the wonder of Christmas. They’ll look back to their childhood and reflect that their play was deeper, the arts deeper and the traditions deeper than cultural whims; that it is steeped in something solid and beyond the imagination. It will whisper to them in the wintry sky as they wonder as they wander out under the sky. Because it does to me. And it did to my dad. And it has done that to generations.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that we have a tendency to idealize Christ’s birth. I understand that Mary was probably shunned, the animals probably stunk and the Magi weren’t present on Christmas day. But what is all of that from Heaven’s perspective? I bet Mary considers all of that nothing compared to the unimaginable goings-on in Heaven at that time. So I figure, we will learn just how profound and beautiful and tantamount that event really was. And it will blow anything I imagined as a child out of the water.
Well said, my friend, well said.
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