Category Archives: Holidays

Another year I enter

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The year still feels new to me! I saw this at Jewel‘s and thought it was a wonderful reminder for the year ahead.

Another year I enter,
Its history unknown;
Oh, how my feet would tremble
To tread its paths alone!

But I have heard God’s whisper –
I know I shall be blest –
“My presence shall go with you,
And I will give you rest.”

What will the New Year bring me?
I may not, must not know.
Will it be love and rapture,
Or loneliness and woe?

Hush! Hush! I hear His whisper –
I surely shall be blest –
“My presence shall go with you,
And I will give you rest.”

~Author unknown~

(Photo courtesy of the morgueFile)

Packing up Christmas

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Even though I am kind of glad to get the house back in order and get back to routine, it always makes me a little sad when Christmas is over and the decorations are put away, not just in my home, but in the community. The special lights are taken down, the cheery decorations are removed, the whole air of festivity is gone, and everything is just…ordinary again. And not just ordinary, but dreary, drab, colorless winter for a few more months.

I was thinking this morning of the shepherds to whom the thrilling, stunning announcement of the Savior’s birth was revealed. What excitement! Bright lights, wonderful news, angels, a quick trip to Bethlehem, awe and wonder at the sight of the Christ child, the long-awaited Messiah. And then…it was back to the sheep and ordinary life. Dark nights, lonely days, smelly work, in all kinds of weather. And yet…they didn’t return quite the same. “And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them” (Luke 2:17,20). I wonder how often they talked of that night, that promise. I wonder how many of them were still alive when word began to spread of a prophet and teacher doing miracles and saying the most incredible things. I wonder if any of them realized it was Him, the same baby they had seen thirty years before. I wonder if any of them saw Him die, or heard about it, and were mystified, and then astounded and joyful at the news of His resurrection. I like to think they continued “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen” even in the midst of “ordinary” life.

And Mary. After the whirlwind of remarkable events — a visit from an angel, remarkable news, an unplanned pregnancy (unplanned originally by her, at least), almost losing her betrothed husband, an uncomfortable trip to Bethlehem and a birth in a stable, strange visitors —  shepherds, and later, magi, then another couple of visits of angels to her husband, a flight into Egypt to protect her newborn Son, and finally, after all of that…back to the ordinary life of a wife and mother, everyday housework and cares, at least six more children. What must it have been like to raise one child who never sinned? Did she have to deal with sibling rivalry against Him of the other six who did? How many things did Jesus say that she did not understand? We don’t hear from much from her in the rest of the New Testament: there was the incident when Jesus was twelve, the wedding at Cana where she asked Jesus to help the host who ran out of wine, and where, incidentally, her last recorded words in Scripture are “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5), a time when she tried to see Him but couldn’t get to Him, watching her Son die on the cross and arrange for her care as one of His last acts (Joseph must have passed away by then). And then in Acts we see her “continuing with one accord in prayer and supplication” with the disciples, women and Jesus’ brethren. Perhaps those quiet years from Jesus’ birth until He began His public ministry were the only ones anywhere near ordinary. We’re told just after the shepherds’ visit that “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). You can tell from what words of hers which we do know of that she was a thoughtful, faithful woman who loved God. From the birth of her Son for the next thirty years, she did not quite know how the promises concerning Him would be worked out, but she faithfully served and cared for Him, pondering all the while the things she had been told.

As we pack up and put away Christmas, may we keep the wonder, the love, peace, and joy, the pondering, the telling, the waiting in hope. May His light fill our ordinary days.

Happy New Year!

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(Graphic courtesy of the Graphics Fairy)

I launch my bark on the unknown waters of this year,
with Thee, O Father as my harbour,
Thee, O Son, at my helm,
Thee O Holy Spirit, filling my sails.

From The Valley of Vision

Hoping for you all a wonderful 2011 with a knowledge of God’s love for you and a resting on Him for whatever He has in store.

★˛˚˛*˛°.˛*.˛°˛.*★* .
˛°_██_*.。*./ ♥ \ .˛* .˛。.˛.*HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011*
˛. (´• ̮•)*.。*/♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____.♥Everyone♥ ˛* ˛*
.°( . • . ) ˛°./• ‘♫ ‘ •\.˛*./______/~＼*. ˛*.。˛* ˛. *。
*(…’•’.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜╬╬╬╬╬*˚ God bless

Flashback Friday: New Year’s

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Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

How did your family celebrate New Year’s when you were growing up? Was staying up on New Year’s Eve a big deal? Was it a date night for your parents or was it a family occasion? Did your family have any particular traditions for New Year’s? Were resolutions emphasized? Did you do fireworks? Watch parades or bowl games? Were there church activities you attended? Did Christmas activities extend into the new year? Was the Epiphany a focus?

We never had a set tradition or routine for New Year’s Eve. Sometimes my parents went out, I think sometimes we got together with other people, most times we stayed home. We did get to stay up late, and I think we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV. We did fireworks sometimes.

My dad probably watched football on most New Year’s Days, and I think maybe the kids watched parts of the parades in the morning. We did have black-eyes peas for dinner, supposedly for luck, though I don’t know what they were supposed to have to do with luck. 🙂 Resolutions were not a big deal, though I tried to make some for several years — it was more just a day to relax before school and work started back up.

When I started going to church as a teen-ager, my church often showed a film on New Year’s Eve and I think had some kind of refreshments afterward. I liked that then, but when another church did that when I was older, a middle-aged mom, I dozed through most of the film and was very cranky afterward. 😳 In subsequent years they played group games, and that made it much easier to stay awake and alert.

The church we attended for the last twelve years had a New Year’s Eve service, but not all the way until midnight: our pastor wanted us to be able to be home before the roads got unsafe with drink-impaired drivers. We usually lived in an area that did not allow fireworks, but last year Jason and Mittu lived outside the city limits, so we took a bunch of fireworks out there and made munchies and had a nice time. We haven’t talked about any plans this year yet. If we’re home we do usually watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV — there is just something about that moment that’s really neat. I remember the year of Y2K as they showed New Year’s celebrations in different countries, being relieved that so far none of the other countries had any problems as the clock turned to 12:00 a.m. and hoped that bode well for us, too.

We do usually take down the Christmas decorations around that time. Sometimes we shop. We don’t watch football and we don’t have black-eyed peas (I like them but my family doesn’t). 🙂 We have never attended a church that celebrated Epiphany, though some pastors mentioned it and they did note that the wise men came some time after Jesus was born (maybe as much as two years) and not while they family was still in the stable in Bethlehem.

So, though New Year’s Eve and Day are probably some of our most nontraditional holidays, I enjoy them as a last bit of vacation before the routine starts back up again.

A lovely Christmas

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I was thinking over the last few days that I should be keeping a notepad nearby to keep track of so many things I loved about this year. Alas, I didn’t heed my own advice, so some things may have been forgotten already. But here are a few:

Jeremy came home Wed. night!

It was such fun getting packages in the mail. Most were from online ordering, but we received a few surprises — including a duplication, or actually, a triplication — which will result in a blog giveaway one day next week. 🙂

It snowed Christmas morning! Not a whole lot, but enough to give us our first white Christmas ever (at least at our own home. We may have had snow one Christmas when we were in Idaho to visit my husband’s folks.)

So much about Christmas day itself — bringing Grandma over, our usual Christmas morning breakfast of cinnamon rolls, sausage rolls and cinnamon sliced apples, Jim reading the Christmas story, gifts given and received in love, a scrumptious lunch — Heavenly Ham (almost free with a gift card Jim had received three years earlier when we lived in a town without that particular ham store) — (and someone to share lunch duties with — Mittu made several dishes), naps, leftovers, a couple of rousing game of Apples to Apples, trying out Jesse’s new Kinect, more snow but not enough to cancel church Sunday, watching a couple of videos together.

Jim reading Christmas story from Matthew

Grandma checking out a gift basket from Jason and Mittu

Silly hats…

Jeremy was supposed to fly back to RI Monday night, but his area was experiencing a blizzard with 10-12 inches of snow. He could make the first leg of his flight but we weren’t sure about the second. We didn’t want him to get stranded at an airport in between here and there. But the flights were all scheduled on time, so we dropped him off at the airport — and he called a while later. His plane was delayed, then it was discovered it had a flat tire, and by the time they got that all fixed there was no way he could have made his second flight. All Tuesday’s flights were booked up by other travelers who had been stranded due to weather, so the earliest flight out was Wednesday morning. I’m so glad he got to stay for a while longer, and that he wasn’t stuck in an airport for a long time.

This was from our first good-bye Monday night:

I didn’t take any of our second good-bye in the wee hours this morning — I stayed in my pjs and didn’t go with them this time. 🙂 It was lovely to have him home for that extra time.

There is a bit more to our Christmas week, but I’ll save it for the Friday’s Fave Five post. All in all it has been a great week.

 

Christmas Reads

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I mentioned earlier that it has only been in the last few years that I’ve tried to read books having to do with Christmas during December. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before! Maybe I just thought December was too busy. But I’ve used some of the devotional ones in place of my regular devotional plan, and I usually have a novel in progress all the time anyway. So I thought I’d sum up my Christmas reading in one post.

Devotional or Non-fiction:

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, several essays on various aspects of Christmas from an assortment of preachers and writers from years ago as well as from current time: Martin Luther, Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd-Jones, John Piper, and others, compiled by Nancy Guthrie. This isn’t strictly a devotional book, but that’s how I used it this year and last. This is an excellent resource. I don’t know if I’ll use it every year, but I can imagine using it again and again.

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie. This is designed for family devotions and is written on a level that children can understand, but it works fine for personal devotions as well. They’re fairly short but they do give food for thought for the day. And I like that it covers 31 days rather than ending at Christmas like so many other Christmas devotionals do.

25 Ways, 26 Days to Make This Your Best Christmas Ever by Ace Collins. I am a little more than half-way through this one. This one wasn’t grabbing me as much as the others were — maybe because I was already going through another couple of non-fiction or devotional Christmas books. The author discusses some of the different aspects and traditions of the season, the history of some of them, their symbolism, and ways to make them more meaningful. The histories are especially interesting, but I wish he had documented more of his explanations of origins. And though I appreciated his justification of some of these traditions for Christians, I felt as though he were saying “You should do this” rather than “It’s okay to do this.” Traditions that enhance the meaning or celebration of Christmas are wonderful, but every now and then they can feel burdensome, and I know many who want to pare down what they do at Christmas in order to keep their focus from becoming fragmented. Nevertheless, this is a great resource, especially if, as a Christian, one is concerned about the “pagan” practices surrounding early Christmas and winter celebrations.

The Greatest Christmas Ever: A Treasury of Inspirational Ideas & Insights for an Unforgettable Christmas. This is a compilation of quotes, poems, recipes, and tips. I have a slight objection to the title — Christmas shouldn’t be a competition. But otherwise it was an okay book.

Fiction:

Finding Christmas: Stories of Startling Joy and Perfect Peace by James Calvin Schaap. This is a collection of short stories. I think I won it during a blog contest last year, received it during December, but wanted to wait to read it til this year. The title describes it well — the main character in each story has some kind of moment — of understanding, clarity, connection. I enjoyed it.

Treasure of Christmas, a collection of three stories by Melody Carlson. Melody is, I think, the queen of Christmas Christian fiction. The three stories or novellas are: The Christmas Bus, in which a bed and breakfast owner, upon learning that none of her adult children will be home for Christmas, decides to keep her establishment open during the holidays. A strange, abrasive old woman and a young expectant couple in a hippie bus are among her visitors, and she begins to wonder if she made a mistake. The Gift of Christmas Present, in which a young woman learns after her mother’s death that she was adopted. She discovers and visits her birth grandmother and is mistaken for an applicant for hired help, which she decides to go along with. As she learns more of her family, the less sure she is of them, and the harder it is to “come clean” and tell the truth. A startling, disturbing revelation shakes her to her core. I was a bit concerned about the third, Angels In the Snow, because people can get kind of weird about angels. But this did end up in the right direction. An artist has recently lost her husband and son and goes to a friend’s cabin to heal and to see if she can unblock her artistic creativity again. A mysterious pair of footprints and an unexpected visitor impact her progress.

I find a lots of Christmas stories, especially made for TV movies, to be very sappy and sentimentalized. Melody’s stories are anything but. Her characters wrestle with real, serious issues and pain, and the endings are good but not saccharine. I enjoyed this quite a lot.

Christmas at Harrington‘s is another by Melody Carlson, and I won this one from Mocha With Linda‘s Booked for the Holidays giveaway (thanks Linda!). I loved this book — and those of you who read my book reviews know I don’t say that about every book I read. Lena Markham has just been released from prison, having served time for a crime she did not commit. She just wants to start over in a new place, so her parole officer sets her up in a new town. When a secondhand red coat inspires a department store owner to hire her as Mrs. Santa, Lena discovers she really enjoys the job. But the past is hard to keep hidden, and hers will threaten her job as well as her new beginning. This was poignant to me because a blog friend’s husband was released from prison this year as well, and I saw some of his struggles echoed in Lena’s. Some people judge her and make it even harder for her to catch a decent break, but others go the extra mile to help and support her.

I was surprised to get a decent amount of reading done during this busy month, but those little snatches of reading here and there do add up, and reading both fiction and non-fiction in Christmas themes enhanced my enjoyment of the season. A couple of others caught my eye that I am saving for next Christmas. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to try some of these next year as well — or even in the next few days if you’re wanting to prolong the “Christmas spirit.”

Merry Christmas!

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Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas.

manger12.gif

Infant holy, Infant lowly, for His bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing, little knowing, Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Swift are winging angels singing, noels ringing, tidings bringing:
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping vigil till the morning new
Saw the glory, heard the story, tidings of a Gospel true.
Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow, praises voicing, greet the morrow:
Christ the Babe was born for you.
Christ the Babe was born for you.

Tra­di­tion­al carol, trans­lat­ed from Po­lish to Eng­lish by Edith M. Reed, 1921.

Graphic courtesy of Anne’ Place.

Candlelight Carol

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It’s interesting how the theme of light flows through Christ’s life. “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid” (Luke 2:9). The star led the wise men to Jesus. Simeon said the baby Jesus was “A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32). John 1 and 3 make many mentions of light. Jesus said of Himself, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Some of those verses come to mind listening to this lovely hymn.

How do you capture
The wind on the water?
How do you count all the stars in the sky?
How can you measure
The love of a mother
Or how can you write down
A baby’s first cry?

Candlelight, angel light
Firelight and star glow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn
Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Angels are singing
The Christ child is born

Shepherds and wise men
Will kneel and adore him
Seraphim round him their vigil will keep
Nations proclaim him
Their Lord and their Saviour
But Mary will hold him
And sing him to sleep

Candlelight, angel light
Firelight and star glow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn
Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Angels are singing
The Christ child is born

Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger
Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay
Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation
A child with his mother
That first Christmas Day

Candlelight, angel light
Firelight and star glow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn
Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Angels are singing
The Christ child is born
Angels are singing
The Christ child is born

~ Words and music by John Rutter

Laudable Linkage

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Just a few things to share from my reading this week:

Shall We Sing of Mary? Chris Anderson shares balanced, perceptive thoughts about this famous song.

Melted snowman cookies, HT to Lizzie. So cute!

Skip to My Lou‘s readers shared a plethora of handmade gifts.

If you’re thinking about someday attending a writer’s conference, some guidelines are here and tips about assembling a writer’s “one sheet” are here.

Senior Olympic Not-Quite-Synchronized Swimming:

Several years ago I posted “If I Were a Goose” — I think I had received it in an e-mail. Earlier this week I heard Paul Harvey reading a slightly different version of the story on th radio, so I looked it up and found it on Youtube as “The Man and the Birds.” Wonderful story, wonderfully told: enjoy!

On my agenda today: getting the Christmas cards out in the mail (after being delayed by the printer running out of four of its six ink cartridges right in the middle of printing out my Christmas letter yesterday!), wrapping presents, a trip to the grocery store, and hopefully starting on a sewing project…intended for Christmas. If I don’t finish it for Christmas, the recipient has a later December birthday, so I’ve got a little breathing room! Have a good weekend.

Friday’s Fave Five

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Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

1. The ladies’ Christmas party at church. Well, actually, at someone’s home, and we got lost on some scary, dark roads (GPS wasn’t recognizing the address), but we eventually got there. Mittu went with me. I’ve been missing the ladies’ group from my old church and the Christmas party there was one of my favorite times of year. This was different, of course, but very good and a lot of fun.  And I won one of the door prizes — Lindt truffles! The testimony the speaker shared was a tremendous blessing.

2. Snow day!

We had snow Sunday night and Monday. I worked on Christmas cards and our Christmas letter and Mittu made treats:

The rest of the week we had ice — not so much fun, though Jesse enjoyed being off school for a couple more days.

3. Good shopping experiences. So far both customers and sales clerks have been pretty in good spirits, and lines have been longer than usual but not too very long. In only one store were my nerves getting frayed because the store had carts but did not allow room to get them around the aisles very well — so I left that store after just a short while. I think I am mostly done shopping — I need to sit down and take stock, but I think, except for 2-3 things,  all I have left is little stocking stuffers.

4. Christmas decorations. We finally got our tree and decorations up last weekend. When I wrote a couple of years ago about our “misfit” ornaments that we still like to use, I mentioned that my kids like to do odd things with some of the ornaments. This year my husband tucked a couple in unusual places, and it was fun to discover them throughout the day. One was this sleigh on top of the log cabin:

And the other was this snowman visiting the family figurines (which my oldest keeps threatening to draw happy faces on):

5. Jason’s surprise package. We got a package in the mail addressed to Jason, but he hadn’t ordered anything that he remembered. So, thinking maybe it was something Jim ordered, I put it away until he got home. I took him into our room and asked him about it. He started to open it, and it looked like…a computer. We called Jason in and asked, “Did you order a computer????” We didn’t think so because we had just taken his Mac with a broken screen in to be fixed earlier in the week. As it turned out, he had caught an announcement about a giveaway for Google Chrome — and he had won! They hadn’t sent him any kind of notification — just the computer. He was thrilled! They’ve had such a hard year, it was neat to see the Lord bless them that way.

Since last week I’ve observed the anniversary of the passing of both my parents, which is a mixture of sadness and nostalgia, but the Lord blessed with an otherwise very good week.

Have a great weekend!