Best. Christmas. Ever.

Apparently I can be a little Scrooge-ish around Christmas time.  I fully embrace the idea of celebrating the night that God came near to us, the birth of our Savior into the world...but I have some hang-ups with the Pagan roots of most Christmas traditions.  Not to mention, the excessive materialism it has ingrained in America's children. I mostly push these things aside to focus on the aforementioned "reason for the season", but sometimes the Grinchiness seeps through.  Plus, this year was the thinnest Christmas Bobby and I have had since we got married so I was kinda bummed about not being able to join in all that materialism I say I hate so much.

See how that works?  We humans can be pretty hypocritical.  It's shocking to me that anyone can point a finger at hypocrisy when we've all been guilty of it on some level.

Anyway, I thankfully married someone who loves Christmas like he's still five years old himself.  It helps in the balancing act of relationships I've talked about before.  So I try and make sure he remembers it's about Jesus and not Santa Claus and he makes sure I remember it's also about joy and child-likeness.  Which brings me to the main reason we've both had a bittersweet past couple of Christmases. 

One of the things we both couldn't wait for after having Joshua was the time when he would be old enough to get really excited about Christmas.  We would laugh and talk about how he probably wouldn't want to go to sleep and he'd get up super early, dragging us out of bed to go open presents.  Well, this year he is four and up until this point none of our expectations of how Christmas would be with small children had come to pass.  We've never been able to get him to open gifts and it usually ended with us opening them, and then trying to force him to sit down and look at them, hoping they would grab his interest.  Which also never worked.  Eventually he would wander over to the new things but our grandiose ideas of gift-opening never panned out.  

So cut to Christmas Eve at Bobby's parents, and neither of us really anticipating anything other than the usual.  Then out comes the drum set LaVonne got Joshua and something amazing happens...he goes right over to it and starts banging away.  He loved it!  He was smiling and happy and actually excited about a present.  And then something else happened...

He started opening everything!

On top of all that, Caleb was really loving all of his stuff too.  We had two little boys running around, taking turns on the drums, fighting over dinosaurs, and ultimately spending time trying out every new gift.

He couldn't even wait to get it out of the box...

Bobby and I just sat in awe with tears in our eyes, feeling like anything was possible after experiencing the purest joy I've ever known.  The year we'd spent the least amount of money turned out to be arguably the best Christmas either of us ever had.  Here we were, upset over not being able to give all we wanted to, and God gave us this reminder of Himself.  The reminder of His covenant love that began when a common Jewish girl yielded herself as a vessel and gave birth to our ultimate gift in a stable.  I don't believe in focusing on Jesus being a baby (because He isn't anymore) or Jesus hanging on the cross (because He isn't there anymore either), but I do believe in Christmas as a time to remember HOW He came to us.  In the most discreet way, with the least amount of fanfare as possible.  His time on earth began and ended under a mantle of humility.  And this year, I was once again humbled by His mercy and grace that He continues to pour out on the most undeserved.