Christmas and the New Year

I can’t believe it’s already a new year. 2020 flew by. The week after Christmas is always a little depressing for me. I hate for it to be over. December is my favorite month of the year, and every year it seems to end even more quickly than the year before. It’s hard to savor such a busy month. I decorate and shop in November because A) I’m too excited to wait, and B) I want to have that part done so that December won’t be quite as hectic. It’s the month that I feel the most stubborn as I try as hard as possible to not let activities take over and replace the Spirit of Christmas. 

And that is my absolute, hands down, most favorite part of Christmas: the Spirit. It’s the time of year when most people behave how they should every day. People are more kind, more generous, more forgiving, more hospitable, more compassionate, friendlier, more joyous. All attributes of Christ. Stick with me, this is just my perspective. But it’s like the miracle birth of Christ, this gift, just blankets the entire world and we can’t ignore it. It’s amazing to me. I walk into a store and see people interacting in ways they normally wouldn’t. I walk into church and see visitors who would normally not be there. It’s awe inspiring.

It’s so grievous to see the world try as hard as they can to explain it away or to try and smother it with materialism and busyness.

Christmas time is a gift to me. A time to just embrace the joy of every little thing. Every year it becomes more and more meaningful to me. And even more so with Luna now. This year I felt like my heart would explode every day as I looked at Christmas thru Luna’s eyes. I lost count of how many times we said ”This is so special” with a lump in our throats. It’s more important than ever for me to keep my eyes on why we celebrate Christmas, and to teach Luna that this is a time to be thankful, to be giving, and to be humbled by the enormity of what Christ has done for us.

A few favorite Christmas moments. Which you’ve probably already seen if you follow me on Instagram😘

We started hiking recently and love it. We got a great hiking carrier for Luna (and I just got winter hiking boots and pants yay!) and try to go every weekend. We noticed several trees along the trails had been decorated by someone. I loved it! So I made loads of salt dough and dried orange ornaments and decorated trail trees too. I didn’t considered the weather with the salt dough ornaments and they were disgusting blobs of dough on the ground when we went back. Haha! 

Luna LOVES our snowglobe collection. We add one every year (or rather Aaron’s mom buys us one every year), and Luna had two mini ones of her own. We play with them every day. I gave her one of the mini ones to play with, I turned away for 5 seconds, and she RAN to the hard floor and threw it down. Shattered in a billion million pieces. So Aaron’s mom got her this plastic one and she has never been so excited about anything before!

Buying Luna’s Christmas books and ornament. A Christmas tradition now.

Spotting a Christmas balloon at the grocery store and hearing Luna’s shrieks of happiness when we got it. Although she was totally uninterested in it when we got it home!

Making thumbprint cookies with Luna for her cousins.

Christmas pjs, Christmas dresses, and Christmas sweaters. I squeezed Luna into her dress from last year too! It’s so cute I couldn’t bear for it to be packed away when Christmas was over last year. The amount of bows on the red dress (a gift from her uncle for her birthday) is just ridiculous and the best thing!

Cutting our real tree the day after Thanksgiving with Aaron’s family.

Christmas Eve brunch at Karen’s house with my mom and Aunt Sandi. I have always loved Christmas Eve even more than Christmas Day so I loved doing something so special on that day. And our candlelight service in the evening is by far my favorite service of the year.

Christmas morning was so slow and relaxed. For the first time since we’ve been married. Not a complaint about previous years at all, but it was nice to not be rushing out the door to get to family lunches and dinners this year. It just worked out that way. And we had a beautiful Christmas dinner with Aaron’s family that evening. Luna refused to help open any gifts on Christmas morning, tearfully telling us “No no!!” because we had drilled it into her NOT to touch them before Christmas day.

I told Aaron that we have to start doing something special the day after Christmas because it’s the saddest day of the year to me!

I have a prayer for the year 2021: I pray that I can humble my pride. Loosen my death grip on self love and anger and self righteousness and bitterness. Get on my knees before God and cry for help rather than running my mouth and ranting my thoughts. Prayer rather than venting. Thankfulness rather than frustration.

I don’t usually have a New Year’s resolution, but this is my goal for this year and I hope that I don’t lose focus.

I have one other smaller goal. Influence. 2020 helped me to see more clearly how easily I am influenced. I do not want social media and entertainment to be my influence. I do not want influencers, no matter how nice they are, to be the people I admire the most and am the most touched by. That is a little fox that I’ve let creep in too often to destroy the vine. I want Godly influence. I need it. I need to crave it. I have been setting up a few boundaries for myself. Time limits on my phone, hitting the unfollow button, less tv, more reading, etc. All simple, no brainers. Nothing profound. But all helpful for me to limit influence.

These things are lifelong battles. Not a thing for one year and then finished. But I pray for a greater determination to work and plow, and not to just say “I wish I had victory”. With God all things are possible and victory is at hand.