By G. E. Shuman
Near the end of each December my
family has two celebrations. You may have guessed that one is Christmas. Actually, and to be precise, both of them are
about Christmas. My kids are grown up now, and most of them have families of
their own, so, on December 25th, we, at each of our homes, celebrate
Christmas in our own way. Then, a week
or so after Christmas, we do Christmas again, all together. I love the fact
that we still do that. This year the big celebration will take place at my
daughter Chrissy’s home, and I am looking forward to it.
It’s
interesting, to me, how families seem to follow their own holiday traditions,
nearly to the letter, year after year.
Although things have changed somewhat in our own home, simply because so
many Decembers have passed here, we still celebrate Christmas pretty much the
same way every year. The tree goes up in
the same spot, with the same angel sitting at its top, and the same decorations
adorning its branches, just as they have adorned the branches of so many other
trees placed in that spot, during so many other Decembers, past. Christmas
lights are first unwound and put on the tree, by me. Then, since my 6’8” son
Andrew no longer lives here, I put the highest ornaments on it, in precisely
the best spots for them. (This actually means I put them wherever Lorna tells
me to put them.) We decorate our two archways, the same way, every year. On
Christmas Eve Lorna still reads the Christmas story from the Bible, and then The Night Before Christmas, to whatever
part of our family happens to be gathered with us in the family room that
night. We still hang stockings on the fireplace mantle, and Santa, somehow,
still seems to fill them before Christmas morning. In the morning we even eat
the same breakfast together and begin cooking a big dinner, without many
changes. A few years ago, one of my kids actually told me that our celebration
was a little boring, because we always do the same things every year. Contrary
to what that child’s opinion was on that particular Christmas morning, I think
that family traditions are good things to have, and to keep, and in this crazy
world may even provide some stability and sense of permanence for us all. In any
case, Lorna and I will, likely, continue these old family ways for as many
years as we can manage to do so.
One
more tradition that my family keeps nearly every year, usually at the big
‘second’ Christmas family feast, has to do with the dessert that is served
after that day’s Christmas dinner. This
tradition is a special one to Lorna and to me, because, if you don’t know
already, we are born again Christians, and feel strongly about the true meaning
of Christmas Day. (And here I feel that I must make a confession to you, my
faithful readers, even before I tell you about that special dessert.) The
confession is that years ago, and for many years, in business, here in the
paper, and in my personal life also, I know I downplayed the roll that my faith
in God has, in my life. It was easier to
just not discuss ‘religion’ and not have to explain all of that stuff to others,
no matter how real it was to me, and no matter how much I knew I should discuss
it with them. In more recent years that
apprehension has simply, somehow, left me, and I am not ashamed, but proud, to
have the world know of my belief in God, and of my personal faith in my Lord,
Jesus Christ. I’m in my 60s now, and at
this point in life I have just received far too many blessings to ever doubt
the reality of God, or to worry about what others may think, if they do not
agree with me. There, I feel much better. Don’t you?
Anyway,
back to our family tradition of that special Christmas dessert. The dessert is
a big cake, decorated for Christmas, and with the words ‘Happy Birthday Jesus’
spelled out on it. After all, doesn’t it make sense to celebrate Christ’s
birth, in some way, on the day that has been designated to do exactly that? Some
years we actually sing the birthday song for Him, and blow out the candles
together. To many people that tradition
would seem really strange, if they happened to visit our celebration at that
moment. If they did visit us, we would
just keep on singing, and invite them to ‘join the family’.
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