A Christ Centered Christmas

The last several years I knew I wanted to reinvent the traditions and meaning of Christmas. I can remember the exact Christmas that I trully felt the commercialism of Christmas. I was so ashamed of the little girl who pouted because she did not get exactly what she had asked Santa to bring her, even though her list of what she did receive seemed to never end. I thought in that moment I don't want my children to ever act like that.

As a child I always loved Christmas time. There was magic in bringing home a fresh cut tree and decorating it with twinkling lights, beads, and other adorning ornaments. I hated that we had to take turns to put the Angel on top of the tree because I loved doing it so much. I loved helping my mother gently unwap each piece to our beautiful nativity scene and wondering what it would have been like to see Jesus as a small babe.

As the years passed, I too started to feel the commercialism of Christmas. It had lost it's meaning to me and I was no longer finding Christ in Christmas. I tried several things to remedy this. I took Santa completely out of the equation and replaced him with The Three Wisemen. While this seemed to help I still couldn't grasp the true feeling of Christmas I had felt as a child.

As a few years passed a good friend and a close family member introduced me to a tradition that answered my prayers. It's focus was Christ. The friend explained to me that it had come from a meagerly family who did not have the financial means to creat an extravagant Christmas for their children. So they told them they would each only receive three gifts, since that is all Baby Jesus got. I thought this was a very clever idea and did more research on just how I could make this tradition work for my small family. While talking to my sister, I had mentioned this gift idea to her. She had told me that she knew a family and did something similar and that each gift and a specific meaning just as the Christ child's gifts did. One was Gold, one was Frankensense, and the other was Muir. Each in turn had a meaning. The Gold was something that the reciever trully desired. The Frankensence was something for the body and the Muir was something spiritual. I knew immediately that this was exactly what I wanted to encourage my family to do.

Although it is the first year that I have trully implemented this tradition into our home. I can testify that I have indeed felt the season to be more focused on Christ. My Children have their own Nativity scene to play with and take special care of baby Jesus.

I encourage you to find ways to bring Christ back into the season and be more like our Savior on this beautiful holiday.