Christmas, yay

I usually find the period leading up to Christmas slightly irritating. Sometimes it can seem a little pretentious and awkward to dig down for some good Christmas cheer when you don’t necessarily feel it, but once you have kids I find you can become more enthusiastic about it.

This year Katie has been introduced to the concept of Santa – something I always thought I’d completely shun from our family’s idea of Christmas. The problem is you can’t avoid Santa unless you lock yourself away at home for two months and go on a media fast. That and the fact he really is an interesting character who apparently loves children and giving them nice things.

You also can’t avoid other adults asking your child if they’ve been good this year. Even worse is asking what they want for Christmas. I listened to how Katie would answer that question on the phone to a relative she was talking excitedly on the phone with recently. She was immediately silent and ummed and ahhed for a while. Yes I find these aspects of Christmas particularly irritating because I don’t want Katie to automatically think Christmas as an “I want” season. No doubt it’ll become like that soon but for now we want to revolve this time around fun and family. We’ve not made a big deal of Christmas this year and not bought any big ticket items for our kids.

I suppose it all comes down to what Christmas actually does represent - CHRIST. These days it has changed and become different things to different people but personally I found it heartening to see beautiful nativity scenes in shopping centres and stopped with Katie to show her what I had only read and told her about it. What a contrast the scene was to everyone shopping madly around us. Frustratingly, any attempt to focus on the most important aspect of Christmas can seem difficult, like last night when we tried to watch The Nativity Story as a family and were disappointed to find the disc damaged. It was virtually unviewable.

One good thing about Christmas that I am grateful for though is that it is not a greatly stressful time for us. We will have a simple dinner with my family as my husband’s family are overseas and maybe check out some Christmas street lights after that. There is no expectation for expensive gifts, dressing up, huge decorations or fancy food – okay maybe just something different and delicious. And time to be together and be thankful for God’s blessings and faithfulness to us throughout the year.