“My Christmas!”

Since there are things entitled, “My Space”, My Books and even My Pillow”, I will call this, “My Christmas”.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Christmas to me is not chestnuts roasting on an open fire even though I am receptive to the warm thoughts that the idea brings. We had coal stoves, and we certainly had Jack Frost nipping at our noses and Yuletide Carols even though I didn’t know what, “Yuletide” meant. I knew it had something to do with the season.

We could not wait for the snow to fall. There was nothing like a good snowball battle. Nobody would get mad because they got hit. It was all in good fun. Come to think about it, we didn’t have any gloves either. Of the 24 cousins mixed in with a few friends about 10 of us would gather down by the spring for a good snowball battle. There was a 30-foot embankment that led to the spring where we got our drinking, washing and laundry water. It was the perfect embankment to create a good, “run-and-slide” in the snow. Within minutes, the embankment was as slick as ice and we were in, “snow heaven”, with emphasis on “we”.

Some of them are truly in heaven, not because they died, but because they met the requirements for heaven that our Bible and our cultures told us about. My Christmas is truly a “we thing” and Jesus Christ is a huge part of that thing. He was a part of the snowball battles and the run-and-slides that we created on that embankment.

Five of them grew up to become soldiers who fought for this country. Others are educators, preachers, successful blue collar workers, grandmothers and grandfathers. We are all scattered from the east west coast after living abroad. Once in a while we gather together again to say good-bye to one of us. Lord have mercy!

“Bless be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.”

Christmas to me is, “Church”. I mean real Church. We had my Momma’s Church and Daddy’s Church. Bye-the-way, Mom was the treasurer for her Church and she kept the money in a mason jar in her closet. My we have come a long way. Both churches were as spiritually warm as a house that was heated from a good coal-stove. Daddy’s Church was the only Church that I have been a member of where the majority of the members were men. During Christmas these big strapping coalminers would unite with the women and children and put on Christmas plays and give gifts to the children.

My mother’s Church was just a mile away and it did the same thing. Those adults showed us that they cared by emerging from their rough lives to do tender things with us. They could have stayed home or gone to the local pub but they chose us instead. That is Christmas to me.

Christmas to me is singing. I love, “O Come All ye faithful, Deck the Halls, Away in the Manger” and I love them especially the way the, “King’s College” Choir sings them.  [Youtube Watch]. But I also love, “Winter Wonderland, Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer, Up On The Housetop”, and I love “Santa Baby” as well.

Christmas to me is my wife and children. All of us will be together this year because I will travel the globe in prayer for the one’s that won’t be present. It is a trip that I take every day. When I think about our Christmas’ together I think about God’s grace to us over the years. My wife has been an amazing woman. When I think of the way she denied herself many things in favor of our children and how she continues to supoort her Perry even though she’d like to give me a bump on the head sometimes “LOL”, I can only say, “Thank God.” Our children continue to make us proud.

That’s a little bit of what Christmas is to me.

I wonder if anyone would like to leave a comment and tell me what Christmas is to you?

Merry Christmas!