Christmas

I thought I'd share how our Christmas tree looks this year because it's weird.  Nicole has developed an penchant for undecorating the tree.  And, well, we knew it would be a draw, so all the more fragile ornaments are clustered at the top of the tree.  She also loves pulling bows off and moving presents from the back to the front of the tree.   Jared says that she's opened a few presents at home, too, for the sheer joy of ripping paper.

It's been a weird year for decorating.  Usually, the day after Thanksgiving, the manger scenes go up, and stay up until New Year's.  The Christmas tree, well, it's up at least the week before Christmas.  This year, the tree went up first.  And I wish it had been the other way.  Those stockings piled up?  Well, they're usually hung with the 3M hooks.  I have burnished pewter colored ones to hang them from.. or I did.  This year, they're nowhere to be found.  The creché on the bottom is a Little People one, because Gracie kept trying to get her hands on the others.  Mom painted the wood one to the right, the one on the left is a glass one that was a gift (the face is missing off the sheep) and the middle was from a kit in the 70s.  My dad painted it, with "help" from my then three-year-old older brother.  The angel that hung from the front of the dowel and "plank" (more like thinner, square Popsicle sticks) got lost years ago, so I printed star fields with a central star from my computer and taped them to a backer board.  The rest of the set is battered, chipped, and broken in places and the stable is rickety.  But that creché has been with us for as long as I can remember.  The one thing I didn't take pictures of is the candles in the window--fake ones so we don't have to worry about burning the house down.  (We usually only have one, but, well, we found the one we lost two years ago)  It's to let Christ know that there's room in our inn and that He's welcome here. 

This is our Christmas.  It's not about the presents, though there will be presents aplenty, but about family, spending time together, and the birth of a special child millennia ago.  So Merry Christmas... or Happy Holidays if you celebrate something different.  And perhaps, for once, we'll have peace on earth for this one night a year.