#199 Christmas and Presents

I love Christmas. I think it's extremely important that we celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus, our Savior, and remember the wonder of the incarnation, of God the Son becoming flesh and taking on our human nature. I enjoy singing Christmas carols and rereading the story of Jesus' birth.

I also love presents. It's a lot of fun to get something that I've wanted or something I didn't consider but really like. And I get a ton of joy and satisfaction from giving someone else a gift that they appreciate.

But sometimes I worry I make Christmas about presents and not about Jesus. I remember times where I went to worship on Christmas Eve and felt myself waiting for the service to be done so I could go home and exchange gifts with my family. Tess and I talked about this recently. We want to give our daughters gifts because we love them. We want to teach them how to receive things well and someday help them experience the joy of giving. We're not opposed to Christmas presents in general. But we also want our daughters to understand what Christmas is truly about, associating it with Jesus instead of presents. So we've decided to try to move our presents away from Christmas Day. We're planning to give our girls their gifts on December 20 in the hopes that we can more fully focus on Jesus on the 25th. (We decided on doing presents before Christmas Day rather than after because we didn't want the girls to want to rush through Christmas to get to their presents.) I'm not here to say that we've found the right way to do this or even the best way to do this, but we're trying to be at least a little thoughtful and intentional about what we're teaching our daughters. Our family is still young enough that we don't have real fixed traditions, so we figure now is the time to try things out.

I'm sharing these thoughts for a couple reasons. First, if my thoughts can be helpful to somebody else thinking through presents and Christmas, then that's great. Second, I'm sure I haven't thought of everything. So if you, dear readers, have any suggestions based on your own Christmas traditions, let Tess or me know. I hope you all have a blessed Christmas. Thanks for reading!

Grace and peace,

BMH