Christmas Eve

We’ll be celebrating today.  Yet, not as grand as we’ve once had.  It’s the second year that traditions of family, food, gifts, and games get traded in for smaller gatherings and absent members. Truth be told, the significance of this tradition had itself slumped one memorable Christmas, much like our gatherings these days.

I remember one year imparticular, the significance had just been about lost all together.  In the earliness of this one morning, I realized that not even a nativity was on display.  Wreaths were out. Stockings were hung. The tree was alit.  

This shouldn’t be.  

Was the reason for Christmas being lost on me?

Before any others that morning, it was early enough to look for the box that contained those ceramic pieces I had so carefully wrapped one by one for fear they would ever break.  My search found all pieces perfectly intact in a deep dark downstairs location.  I unwrapped each one individually.  There was Mary,  Joseph, baby Jesus in the manger, three wise men and assorted barn animals.  All there for no one to ever see.  I felt convicted. This was more Christmas than was upstairs. 

I took them up and placed them smack dab on the floor in the middle of our living room.  Center of attention.  Hoping somebody might even trip over them.  Notice them. I had just about lost what the center of this occasion was about.  Not intentionally.  It’s just that each year there was less room to fit the nativity and its pieces until it finally didn’t fit at all. 

My nativity is out every year since then. Those pieces remind me on Christmas Eve, that there was this momma still in her pregnancy on a day like today.   She would soon go into labor.  A natural birth. With stars in the sky,  no one would fit her in either. There was only a barn where cattle were lowing and a trough filled with hay.  It wasn’t until tomorrow where Jesus would there lay.  

Remembrance is important.

Merry Christmas to you!

Make Jesus the center of all that you do.

Luke 2