A Merrihew Christmas

I thought I would take a minute to share what Christmas looks like in the Merrihew house. The Lord, by His grace, has become an ever increasing part of our lives and it is our desire to make Him the focus of our celebration. We don't have a lot of traditions, but have started with a few simple ones and hope to add to them as the kids get older.

Our tree: We have a non-traditional tree for sure! We got our balsam palms last Christmas at Menards. For some reason I could NOT stop thinking about these trees after I saw them. What I love about them is that they are different and they don't draw my mind immediately to what much of our culture says is the meaning of Christmas. To me the meaning of Christmas is simply to celebrate the birth of our savior and a special time to praise a God who is merciful and kind to rescue us from our sins. I don't know if my thinking is totally wrong, but our tree reminds me of what a tree might have looked like near the stable in Bethlehem. It has proven to be a conversation piece for sure!

Ornaments: Our ornaments are the "Adornaments" that are available from Family Life Ministries and they each represent a name of God. For example, a lion for "the lion of Judah, and a loaf of bread for the "bread of life, and so on. The kids LOVE them and I would totally recommend them if you want to make Christ more central in your celebration. As you can see they are hung in no pleasing aesthetic order but that is just fine with me :) We also buy the kids a special ornament each year that represents them in some way. Though we haven't done it yet, our goal is to set up a little traditional tree in our family room for those ornaments and also special ornaments from extended family. Decorating this tree will hopefully be a time of expressing thankfulness for the gift of family that God has given us.

Nativity: We have a little wood block nativity that we keep under our tree. The kids love to play with it and it is a great way to go through the story of the nativity with them over and over and over and over...

Shepherd's Pouch: We got this idea from Noel Piper's book "Treasuring our Traditions" and it is a little drawstring bag kept under the tree called a Shepherd's pouch. The purpose of it is to collect an offering for a gift to Jesus. Juliana was sooo excited about this b/c it is only reasonable to a 3 year old that Jesus should get a gift on His birthday. Craig and I have selected a ministry that we would like to donate to and we give Juliana and Evan little jobs throughout the coming weeks so that they might earn money to be put in the Shepherd's Pouch. On Christmas Eve Craig and I will add our portion and in the morning the kids will find some small gifts in the pouch in place of the money. This is a way to illustrate several things. First the kids learn that giving to help those less fortunate is a way to give a gift to Jesus. Also they are reminded that the Lord is kind and blesses those that give (though the blessing is not always material).

Food: Christmas eve we do the traditional Merrihew Cincinatti Chili with cheese and crackers. I will probably pick out some kind of dessert. Christmas day has been deemed a pajama day where we have lots of fun with new toys and we have frozen pizza in our freezer for dinner. That is my kind of celebration!

Christmas day night: We just decided to try something else new this year. The idea is that we will drag our mattresses out into the living room so that the family can all sleep under the pretty Christmas tree lights. You know, like a camp-out for those of us who don't share a love for roughing it in the great outdoors. Of course it wouldn't be complete without some great family time with yummy snacks and hot chocolate. Hmmm...this could be super fun or a super bad idea with a 3 and 1 1/2 year old. I think it will be fun, especially as the kids get older :) This tradition will give us something to look forward to after the intial excitement of the first half of the day.

I'd love to hear your traditions to if you would like to share!