10 Days Until Christmas

Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you but Christmas is 10 days away.

If you really must know…I haven’t finished shopping or wrapping gifts, I do not have a Christmas photo of the family so I have not written my annual Christmas letter or mailed off cards.

I know in our household we are very excited for Christmas…excited but not ready.

But that’s okay…you see we all love this festive time of year but as I was chatting with my kids about what they love most about Christmas I was surprised.

They did not say they loved getting gifts the most nor did they even remember their best gift ever.  What they love most is various Christmas traditions we practice.

  • They love that we take the time for a special advent calendar that counts down the days until Christmas.
  • They love setting up the house for Christmas and insist on everyone participating so we need to wait for a night when we are all at home to set up and decorate the tree, hang the stockings, set out the nativity all the while our favorite Christmas CD setting the mood.
  • They cant wait to see what ornament I bought them this year (every year I buy them their own ornament that is selected just for them so that when they move out they can take a little piece of our Christmas into their new home…you can imagine my tree will never make the cover of a magazine but I love it!)
  • They (but mostly me) love the candlelight Christmas Eve service, where hundreds of voices sing Christmas carols in the warm glow of the candles as we remember that very first silent night.
  • And one of their favorite traditions is our extended family Christmas gatherings where tons of parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and so on join together for a shared meal and Christmas festivities.  It’s sounds like chaos…it is chaos…but we love it!

So yah, Christmas is 10 days away but that’s okay…because we know what’s really important.