Christmas Traditions

It’s that time of year! Christmas! The lights are up, the tree is up… maybe it’s been up for a very long time (incident’ly, I once left my Christmas tree up, year-round, for five years – simply because I love Christmas that much!), the presents are even wrapped and under the tree. All the goodies are baked and ready. The meal is planned and prepped (maybe not prepped, but it’s planned). All that’s left are to wait for the guests to arrive.

If you’re anything like our family, you’re waiting on those precious grand-blessings!

Regardless of what goes on each year for the holidays, everyone has a tradition of some sort; even if it’s to go to the local café and eat.

In our family, we always gather on Christmas Eve, have a very informal dinner, and then watch as the kids and grand-kids open gifts. It’s mayhem for about ten minutes, which we laugh and have a great time watching their faces light up as they discover what they’ve gotten this year.

However, when it’s all done, and everyone is settling down and things are getting quiet, we then have our one, very special tradition that we have practiced since our daughter, Rachel, was five-months-old.

My husband reaches for his Bible and sits down on the floor; “Okay, everybody gather ‘round!” Our grown kids begin instructing their kids to “go sit down by PawPaw! He’s going to read us a story!”

I love to watch as, from fifteen to one-year-old, they push and shove to get the best seat, as close to their PawPaw as they can get. Nonney, that’s me, usually gets the honor of sitting next to PawPaw, holding the smallest of the grand-blessings, trying to keep them as still as possible while PawPaw begins reading from Luke, chapter two, the Birth of Jesus.

As I said earlier, we began this tradition in 1984, when our firstborn, Rachel was only five months old. She wasn’t old enough to understand what we were doing. All she knew was that Mommy was holding her, and Daddy was talking.

In that day, we lived in a small, walk-out basement with concrete walls and floor. It’s was warm, but the floor was cold. That same, cold floor is what we sat on to begin our tradition of reading the Christmas Story to our kids.

Now, here we are, thirty-five years later. Our kids are grown. Our family has grown. But the message is the same. It’s a timeless message; a message of hope, deliverance, victory, and such a great blessing. It may be over two-thousand years old, but it never gets old. Jesus was born to a virgin to save us all from eternal separation from God.

Maybe that doesn’t sound very comforting; a baby being born to be a sacrifice. Well, the baby wasn’t sacrificed. He grew up to be a wonderful, powerful, humble man who did miraculous things in his thirty-three years of life. He was perfect. As God’s Son, of course He would be. And when the time came, He fulfilled the prophecy of Scripture to be the perfect sacrifice for mankind. He went willingly, quietly, to be tried as a criminal, beaten, mocked, spit upon, and ultimately crucified on a cross, and then… just as He predicted… three days later, He rose from that grave, alive, in VICTORY, so that we (when we call on Him) could be saved from an eternity in hell. There is our hope!

It pains me to think of the brutal things He went through for me, for you. But before I can get too pained over it, He reassures me that He loves me so much and would do it all over again. Why? Because of LOVE. Because He loves us all that much. Hard to imagine. Yet, it’s true!

But it all started over two-thousand years ago, in a tiny town in the Middle-East called Bethlehem. And that is why we gather every year, on Christmas Eve, to read out of Luke 2.

We have tried to pass the torch, as our kids have had kids of their own. A few years ago, we even sat down with a professional and had it recorded, making DVD’s for our kids. However, although they love the keepsake, every year they still gather around my husband for the “Live” reading and say, “No, you read it, Dad.”

Our grand-blessings don’t all fully understand the extent of the reading of the Christmas Story. But someday, they will. It is our hope that one day they will carry on the tradition.

And so, I leave you with a very loving,

From our home, to yours; Merry Christmas!