So far, this year has been an awfully easy Christmas season. If I were a superstitious person, I'd be expecting the other shoe to drop, but I am not, so I think I will just be happy!
I am very blessed to have a very flexible family. I know so many who have stress upon stress because Mom MUST have the dinner on Christmas Eve and mother-in-law MUST have everyone at her house to Christmas dinner, everyone MUST buy gifts for each other.
Blech.
My mother-in-law has three daughter-in-laws. I think being the mother of all boys makes you flexible (if not insane, but that is another post, based on my own experience with my four boys!). Anyway, she has us all over the weekend before Christmas, on whatever day works best for everyone. We do gifts for the kids, but the grownups just do small things - I bake breads and cookies, one always gives everyone coffee, the other does a craft and some little Italian cookies. My in-laws give us money. I like them a lot!
Christmas Eve we are going to church, then I am not sure what the night holds. There is talk of getting hot chocolate and fancy coffee or eggnog and driving around looking at lights. When we get home we will have appetizers instead of dinner (smoked sausage, cheese, crackers, shrimp cocktail, good stuff!). Last year we got on Gospel for Asia's site and bought gifts for missionaries. I think we will do something like that again this year.
We are also going to do something very different - we are going to open presents Christmas Eve. We have church on Sunday, but only the service, not Sunday School. So we will open gifts Saturday, then we can sleep in and have a big breakfast Sunday, and head up to worship. After church, home to fix dinner and my mom and stepfather come over and enjoy a meal with us, then open a few more gifts together.
My mother has also gotten very flexible, as we now do Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve together, and it is at my house, not hers. My entire life, Christmas Eve was with Mom's family. Out with the old, in with the new!
So, we have attended some parties, the Christmas band concert is over, the big family gathering is just a memory, everything is bought and wrapped and I even have all the food in the house. All that is left is to enjoy - to take this time and relax. To be able to breathe, and to think of Christ, the blessing of our salvation, and this blessed Christmas time.
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