On Trimming Trees & Sweet Baked Things

I love Christmas time.  For the Christian, it is a time of reflection on God’s gift, His redemptive plan, the incarnation, and the virgin birth.  Maybe it’s the impending date on the calendar or the cheery Christmas music exploding from my car radio, or maybe it’s just the stirring of my heart…but as of late, my mind has been saturated with these things.

 

As a young family, our specific Christmas traditions are still sort of in flux.  Some things kinda just happen…like the fact that we started going to the Parade of Lights six years ago and have gone every year since; now it’s just assimilated into part of what we do at Christmas.  There are other things, though, that occur with much more intentionality.  A common one among lots of families is the giving of an ornament each year.  Our first married Christmas, we had a small, I mean very tiny, very humble little Christmas tree.  We filled it with ornaments we each had received throughout our childhood.  It was such a sweet time for Adam and me, going through the box of ornaments we each got from our parents.  Combining those varied and fragile emblems for the first time, hanging them on a tree together was just a captivating thing for my newlywed heart.
  

(The top three ornaments are from Adam's childhood; the bottom three are from mine.)

                   
  

Then, for the first few years of child-less married life, we gave each other ornaments, adding ever so dearly to our collection. When we had Parker and Sawyer, though, we started collecting an ornament for each child each year. 

The one on the left was the first ornament for Parker; the one on the right was the first ornament for Sawyer.

In addition to “ornamenting,” I have really enjoyed making homemade baked goods for our neighbors.  I just think it’s fun – from deciding what to make, how to package it, and thinking about how I hope it just adds to their joy.  This year I made blueberry muffins, boxed in red and white and adorned with a Christmas bulb.

(A little background in a long paragraph about our neighborhood:  We are blessed to live in a nice home on a nice little block.  We are the youngest people on our street by at least a decade and a half.  I like to imagine ol’ Burrito Joe (our across-the-street/catty-corner-neighbors) refers to us as “whipper snappers.”  With the age of some of our neighbors comes a touch of senile disorientation.  For instance, one of our next door neighbors, (I’ll just initial him as “L.”) believed that the yellow house down the street was a sleeper cell terrorist group until the new neighbors moved in.  I’m unclear as to L’s reasoning for this, other than the men that rented the home worked for a dairy and kept odd hours.  Almost all of neighbors are of retirement age.  So you can see why I chose muffins: it seemed like something they would enjoy and, truthfully, muffins seemed preferable to something like rock candy or caramel that might not cooperate with their Fixodent.)

Enough about our neighbors and our ornaments.  I'll leave you with the following excerpts from Scripture.  May your family be blessed this Christmas and may we each be reminded of the fullness of His grace!

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.”  
Isaiah 9:6-7

“This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.  Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."  When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”  
Matthew 1:18-25