What Made Covid Christmas Eve Special

This Christmas was special in its own way--despite, and perhaps because of, Covid.

Almost every Christmas season I've been very busy trying to do things for others--

from practicing for Christmas programs to caroling to baking goodies or making cheese balls

to being part of extended family gift exchanges to finding someone in need to help.

Last Christmas we even took our goat and chickens to be part of a living nativity!

This Christmas was more laid back. 

Personally I did very little of the above. I only went out shopping one day!

Crystal was home from college and student teaching and kept the piano alive with practicing new Christmas arrangements.

Our children did some caroling but I let them go themselves with a few young friends while I stayed home and took care of the men folks coming home from work and needing supper, and then worked on my own projects. 

Not to say I didn't love this photo one of my family in Missouri sent of surprising my parents one night when the relatives there got together to carol to them! I thought my mom looked so very nice in this picture! Happiness does so much for a person!

The above photo is from one of my family back in Missouri, too. I just loved it. I read an article a couple days ago by John Piper, answering a question that comes in often at Christmas time, about whether having a Christmas tree is pagan or not. He answered well. 

I found it quite amazing that John Piper, noted Christian scholar and preacher, and his wife chose not to have a Christmas tree in their home. It's not like he's Mennonite or Amish or ultra-conservative or a miserable hermit. Not because Mr. Piper thinks it is pagan, but because they chose to have something that more specifically points to Christ as the center of Christmas. Something like the beautiful display above, on my brother's family's mantle. If you want to find out what that was that Piper's family did, and the other special things his family did such as have Shepherd's bags instead of Santa's stockings, read the following article at this link: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/is-christmas-too-pagan-for-christians

 

It was a happy moment when I opened up the bag of sweet gifts a sister had sent back with my children who had made a quick business trip to Missouri. Nothing like a sister to know what kind of little gifts will lift my spirits!

Jonathan and I kept capturing beautiful sunsets around Christmas time. I got down low to try to catch our little hanging creche with the sunset behind it.

Christmas Eve we had a very simple supper, but I did splurge and buy a couple small packages of shrimp especially for Jonathan with some of a Christmas gift of money someone sent us. Otherwise we had simple baked sweet potatoes with butter (my favorite way of serving sweet potatoes), and there were some Christmas treats later that evening.

This was my all-time favorite time this Christmas--Jonathan reading out loud a very charming Christmas story to us from a book Crystal had on her shelf, Christmas in My Heart. And the story was called "The Candle Tree." You'll have to look up that story and read it yourself. It was about a little girl whose parents had so little money that they could barely pay their rent, but they pretended the vegetable pie the mother and girl made for Christmas was full of carrots which were gold, and onions which were silver, and potatoes which were ivory. And the little boy next door, son of rich but unhappy parents, ended up longing for the love in that poor home. 

His home was full of Christmas tree, lavish decorations, delectable smells of food, and grouchy relatives who blamed and deceived each other. He crept over Christmas morning to the "poor" neighbors, and shivered outside the door without any gloves, not because he didn't have any, but because he'd forgotten to put them on because he was so excited to get to go with that loving family to find their "tree." The family went together with the little rich boy to the woods and found a little tree on top of which the dad placed a burning candle. And that tree glistened with all the sparkles of a million gems! But what the boy wanted most of all was the love that he saw when that little family of three held hands around the tree, and he wanted to hold the mother's hand, too, so he did. 
And in the end,

In the end of the story, the little boy ran home and got the beautiful pink doll that should have been given to his cousin, but which was still by the tree because his cousin's family had gotten mad and left the Christmas celebration in a huff. His grumpy and miserable mother at first did not want him to take the doll, but relented, and he brought that doll to the little girl who had been longing for a doll. So in the end, the little boy in the rich but unhappy family found the love he had been longing for, and the little girl in the poor but contented family was blessed with the beautiful doll she had been longing for. The story is a wonderful story about the blessing of contentment and happy family relationships, even when life is hard. Money and gifts and lavish celebrations do not hold a candle to simple, contented, happy, loving family relationships where the father treats the mother tenderly and where she lives to give him joy, where they both love their children enough to play with them and spend time creating fun games when there is no other gift to give.

I was happy that Jonathan could look at his family and say that he thinks that we have that same joy in our home--even if we have our imperfect times.