I love Christmas!

It's true. I love the feelings and practices of Christmas. I love the focus upon God's greatest gift and the focus upon family together time. For our family, the Christmas season officially begins the Friday morning after Thanksgiving when we go out to the farm to cut our trees. Later that weekend we decorate and begin playing Christmas music. My wife, Linda, begins to take whatever grandkids are around through the stories of the Jesse Tree.

Last weekend we had our immediate family Christmas. It was a blast. We celebrated from Friday's supper through late afternooon on Sunday. All of our kids and grandkids were home. Our parents (the great grandparents) stopped in to watch, play and hold the new baby. Jackson.
We laughed, told stories, created and played games, opened gifts, and sang Christmas carols. The focus of our time was each other, God's greatest gift, fun and food. (Linda, my wife, does an amazing job on food!)

We make up games. My kids (led by Ben) created a new game I would call family room pong which was something like playing racquet ball off the family room walls with ping pong balls and paddles. I reinstituted for a second generation, the game "refrigerator" which means that grandpa lays on the floor and 8 grandkids climb on him and try to keep him from moving. Grandpa's goal and the way to score is for me to reach the refrigerator (thus the name). It was hilarious to watch the kids wrestle, fight and pull to keep grandpa from moving.

In the evenings, we shut off the lights except the tree and candles and sing Christmas carols. Each grandchild gets to choose which one they want us to sing. Our grandkids also shared favorite parts of the celebration.

Sometimes, I hear great frustation with the direction of our culture and with the commercialization of Christmas. Sometimes, I'm in converstaions with people and their focus can be everything that is wrong with the world. Sometimes, fear and frustration are the driving emotions even Christians want to express.

I love Christmas because it is one season of the year when each of us has great influence over where our focus and the focus of our family will be. Will you and I get the focus right. Will we pour out our lives in service to each other? Will we get the focus on the silent and holy night of God's gift? Will fun be a key element? Will we build traditions that will be passed into future generations?

Linda says we have about 50 coming for Christmas Day. Probably not a lot of quiet in our house that day. But I bet there will be fun!

I love Christmas because the season gives us the opportunity to get quiet, to reflect upon God's greatest gift, and to invest in those we love.