Mission accomplished!  The house is now seasoned with Christmas.  And it feels appropriately magical.

Every year it looms….the scheduled day to hunt down the perfect tree, dragging of ornament boxes from the attic and wrestling with dysfunctional light strands.  This year we lost the battle with the lights.  Too many half lit strands and missing bulbs from two decade old light led to the quick decision to rezone them to the recycling bin and make a hasty trip to town for new ones.

But after the tree is lit comes the best part, my favorite part, the re-discovering and hanging of ornaments.  I usually lose the kids after a few minutes; their true interest being the traditional cheese & sausage, crackers, and eggnog that accompany the task.  I don’t rightly mind.  For me, unwrapping the ornaments is a nostalgic traipse through the unfolding story of family.  It is ripe with warm memories.

When my husband and I were first married, we started the tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree.  This was an easy task in rural Ontario, Canada (a tradition that has proven much more challenging in North Carolina).  Our first Christmas stands out vividly in our memories, of driving through heavy snowfall along dark country roads, of slippery fish tailing, dodging snowdrifts, and a near wipe out.  Once at the farm, we leisurely wandered the back lot through deep snow, inspecting trees in the crisp night air by the glow of a full moon and the tingling of falling snow.  It was a moonlit winter wonderland, magical and romantic and exhilarating.  We contently wandered about till we found the perfect tree for our tiny apartment in
back of a Victorian farmhouse.

We started an ornament collecting tradition on our honeymoon without even realizing it.  We were two poor university graduates, honeymooning in Stowe, Vermont and Old Quebec City.  While in Vermont, we visited a
year round Christmas store.  We found the cheapest cute ornament we could, a wooden, snow covered mailbox, as a souvenir of our time there.  It cost a meager $1.79, but the memories remain priceless.  So began the tradition of adding one new ornament to our tree every Christmas.  Over the years, it has produced a treasured collection.  

Sometimes the ornaments were purchases, other times gifts.  Four very blessed years included “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments.  Some items have names to represent the ornament giver: JD from Graduate InterVarsity, Gong Zhi from China, Angie from the girl’s home I worked at, Jed and Ennifer – neighbors Ed and Jennifer whose names my son kept reversing.  There are some cherished angel ornaments from foster families and the dear children I worked with, a delft blue candle from my cousin in Holland, and some very precious ornaments crafted by our children in their youthful years. I have also inherited some inverted Christmas balls from my youth, rich with visions of childhood.  Every ornament represents cherished memories and relationships, signifying a lifetime of blessings.  

December nights, I love to sit in the dark living  room, sipping tea in the glow of the Christmas tree.  These nights are filled with nostalgia of Christmas’s past, of friendships from previous places and life stages.  It is magical to gaze upon the tree at the ornamental reminders of life’s rich blessings.

Sometimes, at nights end, it’s hard to unplug the lights and turn the richness to darkness.  It’s a bit of a statement of how fleeting life is; a life marked by memorable people and places.  There it hangs in display, all twenty-nine Christmas’s of a great marriage filled with the richness of family and friendships.

It celebrates this present Christmas as well.  As I look at the tree, I anticipate my family gathering together on Christmas Eve, my daughter, son and daughter-in-law and their respective dogs spending the night, so we can continue to enjoy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day traditions together.  We will gather around the tree and linger long.  We will reflect on the goodness of our Heavenly Father in gifting us with a Savior.  We will fill stockings and exchange gifts of love with each other.  We will create new memories and share in the rich blessings of family and faith.

And we will add a new ornament to mark the growing memories and ongoing blessings.

Yes, the Christmas season is filled with the nostalgia of treasured traditions and memories, of magical moments, of celebrations and gatherings with loved ones.  All reflect the rich blessings of God in this wonderful season – the season that marks the gifting of His greatest blessing to mankind – His beloved Son.  Sending Jesus to earth to become fully man while being fully God, for the express purpose of sacrificially dying for our sins so we can receive unending life, is the most outrageously powerful expression of love imaginable.

This is the overriding beauty of Christmas! God’s great love expressed in the birth of Jesus is the anchor to all the beauty and nostalgia and celebrations of the season.

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.  He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus3: 4-7)