The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Guess What?...It's almost

CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!!

This Monday, I put up the tree and a few decorations.  I usually don't go gung-ho on Christmas decorations, cause then in a couple of weeks, you have to take them all down, and that is not fun!

 

This year, I made some homemade decorations

 

This is a paper snowflake, made out of an old book

For this tree-topper star, I cut 10 thin, straight twigs and tied the ends together with twine

 



 

This is just an old flat wooden box, filled with pine branches swiped from the motley array of evergreens growing behind the camp kitchen :) (They're especially motley now!) Then, you just stick a few candles in it and viola! Cheap Economical Christmas decorating at its finest!

I love this time of year!

 

Memories from Christmas's Past

 

I remember being a kid, anxiously awaiting Christmas, when we could run down the stairs, dash into the living room and tear open our presents.  Except,... in the Logan house, it didn't usually work that way.  Every year from the time we were little, our first present was a clear plastic candy cane filled with M&Ms or some other candy.  Dad would hide one for each of us, and we would spend the first part of the morning searching for it.  Looking back on it, I realize that Dad had ulterior motives...he wanted to sleep in!  I remember one year, he told us kids that if we all teamed up and lifted him off the bed, he would get up and come downstairs so we could open presents.  No matter how hard we tried, grunting and heaving, we just couldn't budge him! 

 

I also remember another "special" Christmas memory- when I was little, I wanted to be a doctor or a nurse.  One year, Dad got all of us girls those little plastic nursing kits, with the little plastic knives, syringes, sticker bandaids, etc.  Dad was sleeping on the couch, and as I watched him, I realized in my little kid mind that surely Dad would be much more healthy and better off if I gave him a shot!  Quietly, so as to not wake him up, I went up to the couch and jabbed that surprisingly sharp plastic syringe into his arm and gave my Daddy his vaccination!  For some reason, he was not as concerned with his health as I was.  I offered to remedy the pain by giving him one of the sticker bandaids that came with the kit, but he decided he needed that as much as he had needed the shot!  I never did become a nurse-maybe it had something to do with my bedside manner?

 

All that said, looking back now, I don't think I really realized the significance of Christmas when I was a kid.  I just got excited because I got to open presents and get more stuff.  When I got saved, I realized that Christmas is the celebration and remembrance of the beginning of Christ's life on earth.   The gifts are a symbol of the gifts the wisemen brought, and a symbol of generosity, not of covetousness.  We Americans are very commercialized in our outlook on Christmas, but though the gifts are nice, parties are fun, and the food is good, our main focus should be on Christ.  He is the perfect son of God, who put himself in the form of pathetic man and came to earth to die for us...to die for His very creation that would spit in his face and reject him. 

What will you do with the Lord Jesus Christ this Christmas season?