Thoughts on Christmas

Christmas season is here, and the busyness has been upon us. Starting on Christmas Day we have Christmas celebrations (and things like Dr. visits) intermittently until January 1st.

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We have been talking in Sunday school about Christmas focus. We started last Sunday going through the book Christmas is Not Your Birthday. It started us thinking about what giving and presents should mean and that if they are the main focus, it's off.
This Sunday we talked more about how it's Christ birthday that we are celebrating.

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This being the Troyer's first Christmas as a family (meaning Mr and me) we are celebrating as a family on Christmas Eve. Between the snowblower and "childbirth class" dvd's we don't really have gifts to exchange, so we are hoping to spend some good time together, watch some football (go LIONS!!), and have some good conversation and planning to how we want to approach our family Christmas as we add a family members next Christmas.

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As I was thinking about those things today, and celebrating Christ's birthday I started thinking. We so often spend the whole Christmas season every year hearing and learning about Christ's birth, and there is nothing wrong with that, it's very good and healthy. I did happen to wonder though, what if we celebrated Christ's birthday more like we celebrate our birthdays? When you have a birthday, do you spend it only talking about the amazing events that happened during your birth? The way I see the prophecies and story of Christ birth laid out, it makes it very difficult to look at just Christ birth without getting into other areas of Christ's life, death, and plan. Kinda makes me interested in expanding my view and focus on Christmas. Not just to Christ's birth, but realizing that the day of his birth ushered in a whole lot of things to happen.

We'll see what all comes from the Troyer Christmas as far as decisions on the approach we want to take with our family, but I feel I have plenty to think about and pray about as Christmas Eve approaches.

What are different ways your families celebrate Christmas without focusing on the tree and gifts??

BT

PS Do you like my pictures? I felt bad about another wordy post, so I thoughts I'd break it up with some somewhat related pictures! So hard to please everyone; right Cherry and Grace ;)