Christmas 2019

This year Christmas was cut a little short.  Brandon is still bitter about that, as Christmas is his favorite season of the year (did you know that there are actually five?).  Usually Christmas starts the Saturday after Thanksgiving when we spend the day decorating the house, listening to Christmas music, and finishing the evening watching White Christmas while drinking peppermint hot chocolate. 
However, this year we were an ocean and several continents away from our house and decorations, so it didn't happen the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Instead we decorated the house the next Saturday, less than thirty-six hours after we stumbled off a plane in Tashkent.  It was less cheerful than our usual tree decorating (and with vomit), but it did get done. 
We did manage to get in most of our traditional Christmas activities in three weeks instead of our usual four, even if it never quite felt as fully Christmas-y as it does in other, less jetlag- and newborn-filled years.
A week after decorating the house for Christmas, we had our fifth caroling party.  When I suggested skipping the party this year - jet lag and a newborn are a good excuse - Brandon insisted that we couldn't break tradition and the party would be happening.  And in comparison to traveling almost halfway across the world with seven children six weeks after popping a baby out, hosting a caroling party really wasn't that difficult. 
In addition to caroling, we also made snowflakes, watched Christmas movies, decorated a gingerbread house, made wrapping paper, and had friends over for Christmas Eve.  I love having traditions, and Christmas traditions are really fun ones. 
Christmas itself was wonderful.  Elizabeth let us sleep in until 7:30, so that was her present to us.  We had our usual croissant cinnamon rolls, opened stockings and presents, listened to Christmas music, read books, watched a movie, and enjoyed spending the day together. 
We don't buy many presents for the children (instead of dollar signs I see pounds whenever we buy more things), so the day was less about stuff and more about spending time together.  As we watched the children and their friends perform the Nativity on Christmas Eve, I thought about how the birth of that baby made - and makes - days together as a family possible.  Because of His birth, I know that we all will live again and be together after we pass from this life.  But also His birth enabled us to know what things are most important and how to hold those things close. 
I've had difficulty reconciling the more secular aspects of Christmas with the sacred ones.  But over the years, I've come to think that perhaps Christ would want us to have the pleasure of friends and family and fun times together in celebration of his birth.  That all of the trappings - snowflakes, gingerbread houses, presents, silly songs - bring us happiness in simple little ways.  Instead of feeling guilty for doing things that aren't directly worshipping our Savior, I'm grateful that he came to earth so that we could enjoy these secular things along with the sacred.  I'm grateful for the family to enjoy them with, and all of the other blessings - health, peace, prosperity - that make the smaller things possible. 
This coming week we'll put all the Christmas things away and life will return to its usual routine.  January is always a bit of a sad, bleak month to me.  Christmas has gone and spring is very far away, with winter just getting settled in.  But there will always be next Christmas and all of the good things and times in between.