Two years ago I wrote a \u201cHoliday Musings\u201d article for Training for Triumph\u2019s newsletter. It has a lot of the same ideals that you will find in this blog\u2014in season and out of season! However, I want to share it with you this Christmas. I pray that you will be moved and encouraged by it. <\/p>\n
\u201cHoliday Musings\u201d<\/p>\n
by Donna Reish<\/span><\/p>\n I love Christmas! I love giving gifts to my children; I love lights and beautiful decorations; I love doing family activities over and over again every year; I love baking goodies and giving them away. I even have a verse to substantiate my desire to give good gifts to my kids at Christmas time: \u201cIf ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?\u201d (Matthew 7:11). I mean, God knows that even we mere mortals love to give good gifts to our kids! <\/p>\n Although all of the things in my \u201cI love\u201d list above are somewhat \u201cunspiritual,\u201d we have found through the years there are some common threads that we try to emphasize\/do during the Christmas holiday\u2014some to remember and ponder what Christ has done for us more fully; some to deepen our relationships with each other; some to show Christ\u2019s love to the world. Allow me to give you a list of my holiday musings. <\/p>\n 1. Think about, talk about, sing about, and remember the true reason for Christmas as a family throughout the month. We have found many things that help us focus on the birth of Christ more and more throughout December: singing carols together; reading Christmas picture books with the littles in the afternoons; collecting nativity scenes; reading from chapter books that emphasize the birth of Christ, such as Max Lucado\u2019s Cosmic Christmas, Gene Edwards\u2019 The Birth, and Marjorie Holmes\u2019 Two From Galilee; going to community events that point us back to the reason for the season, such as Christmas plays, live nativities, walks through Bethlehem, Christmas 2. Create family traditions. We have too many holiday traditions to list in just one short article, but research has born out the importance of traditions in building a child\u2019s outlook on many things\u2014and it is so obvious when you hear children talk and repeat that mantra: \u201cWe always\u2026\u201d There is something about being able to say that we always, or our family likes to\u2026 Two of our favorite traditions are decorating the house together and reading inspirational Christmas stories throughout the month of December. <\/p>\n Our older kids laugh until they cry as they give play-by-plays of each ornament making ordeal we have gone through. (Our tree is decorated with only home made ornaments\u2014another tradition we have is that of making ornaments together.) Anyway, they have a joke of holding up the sample ornament (one that I bought that we were modeling after) and holding up one of ours and chiming, \u201cSample ornament; Reish ornament\u201d over and over. Then they tell about the time I threw the cinnamon sticks across the room in a fit of Christmas stress as we tried to make the \u201cornaments in a minute\u201d out of cinnamon sticks. Then we all laugh some more\u2014and I try my best to keep from crying as I think about Christmases gone by\u2014and wonder where the years have gone and long for just a day from a Christmas ten or fifteen years ago. <\/p>\n Traditions do not have to be elaborate or expensive. Some of ours (besides the decorating night and ornament making) are as simple as watching certain Christmas movies while we wrap gifts; eating shrimp alfredo while we watch White Christmas; reading about holiday traditions each morning; learning a new carol together each year (all the verses!); having the kids exchange their gifts with each other on Christmas Eve; reading inspirational stories each night before bed; reading one of the Gospels during the month of December; etc.<\/p>\n *Copyright TFT 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two years ago I wrote a \u201cHoliday Musings\u201d article for Training for Triumph\u2019s newsletter. It has a lot of the same ideals that you will find in this blog\u2014in season and out of season! However, I want to share it with you this Christmas. I pray that you will be moved and encouraged by it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[643,488,633,308,281],"tags":[644,317,277,107,195,283,69],"yoast_head":"\n
cantatas, movies, and plays that emphasize the coming of the Savior.<\/p>\n