Good Holidays

I love Christmas! Growing up, it was always a major event. My mom was maticulous about the decortaions and there were tons of presents underneath. When my stepdad was alive he would tell us to take turns opening gifts based on our age, and usually it would go from youngest to oldest. Which meant I was always able to go first. For us, it was always a two day event: Christmas eve and Christmas day. My mom would stay in the kitchen frantically cooking and the kitchen was full of festive smells. The movie It's a Wonderful Life would be playing on the big screen and I would get nervous every year because I knew that most of the gifts would not be wrapped until I went to sleep. Yet going to sleep was such a challenge. As an adult, I am the designated gift wrapper, and I wrap all the gifts. It is important that they are wrapped perfectly, the corners must be folded properly, and just the right amount of take should be used. My aunt taught me how to wrap gifts because she was an advid gift giver. No matter who they were, she ALWAYS had a gift for everyone that would visit her at Christmas. As a young adult she would call me to get their gift from under the tree and their eye beamed with delight as they opened their gift.
One year, my brother and I decided to check around the house and find our gifts ahead of time. We looked in all the closets trying to figure out which gifts were ours. To our dismay, the gifts that we thought were our were not and we had guessed wrong. Over the years the traditions have changed but for our family it is still a two day event. Fun, fun, fun. We would open up our gifts and then get dressed to make the rounds to our extended families to pick up gifts. Then we would come home and play with our toys, praying that we could do it all over again in the morning. As a parent I pray that I can create the same magic for my daughter while still preserving the meaning of Christmas; the birth of Christ. I hope to have a perfect balance of love and tradition that she can hold onto for the rest of her life. The best gift to give at Christmas is love.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16