This is How We Christmas Celebrating Christ

Welcome to the final installment of This is How We Christmas 2009! Thanks so much to all of you who have played along. I’m still working my way through your decoration posts but I can already say you girls have some skillz in creating some holiday atmosphere in your homes.

First things first, y’all want a winner for last week’s giveaway to Vintage Lane! The random number according to Random.Org is….

  #16   ~   Denise @ You Never Let Go

Congratulations, Denise!  Contact me at thepreacherswife1 AT gmail DOT com to claim your prize of  $50 credit towards a Vintage Lane purchase!   Thanks again to Rachael for a fabulous gift.

Now, we are on to the most important portion of our ‘how we do it’ list:  how we celebrate Christ during this season.  Do you have Advent devotions?  Have a birthday party for Jesus?  Attend or take part in special programs at church either in general or with your womens’ ministries?  Tell us all about it!

Here are just a couple of things we do:

1.  The Christmas Story:

On Christmas morning, we never open gifts without reading the Christmas account from Luke 2 first.   Obviously this may seem tortuous to the kids but they accept that it’s important to our family to keep the gifts in proper perspective to The Gift.  To add a little twist to the reading, we buy Cokes in glass bottles and drink them to clear the fog from our sleepy heads.  Truly, is there anything more refreshing than an ice cold Coke from a glass bottle?  Up until this year we’ve found special edition bottles that are vintage remakes.  No luck this year in finding them but we’ll do regular glass if we can’t locate the cool ones.

 

2.  Christmas Cantata:

Our church choir is truly gifted and puts on an absolutely beautiful cantata every year.  It’s not every church gifted with so many wonderful voices so I don’t take for granted that we have one talented bunch who work very hard to lead our church and community in musical worship through their performance.  This year’s program was called Night of Hope.  My favorite song was “He Came Down” and just goes right along with the concept of God condescending to His people that He has reminded me of over and over this season.  Beautifully done, precious Choir.  Your pastor and his wife love you all so much!!  (Even you, Dewayne…considering you are the meanest dern deacon alive.)

3.  Prayers over Gift Assembly:

Okay, so really this next thing isn’t all that spiritual except it takes all the restraint of the Holy Spirit to maintain one’s composure during the annual putting together of Christmas gifts.  Especially when the instructions look like this:

That would be the diagram for assembling the weight bench Luke got the boys last Christmas.  As in a year ago.  As in it’s been in the box in the corner of the playroom until today.  This year’s gift was the weights that went with it hence, the necessity of putting together the bench.  It was definitely a bonding moment for Dad and Sons:

I am happy to report the bench was built in the span of the afternoon without major incident or any detours from the road of sanctification.  Boy One has offered to teach me how to work out properly.  I’ll be glad to let him as long as he is willing to wait until January 1.  I have lots of eating on the calendar between now and then.

4.  Kids’ Programs and Jesus Birthday Party:

Back to the spiritual stuff.   I would love to hear your ideas for a Jesus Birthday Party.  Our children’s church will be hosting one but we’ve elected to do it the Sunday after Christmas since all the kids’ programs took place today.  That would be the same kids’ programs of which I have no photos because I couldn’t find my camera battery this morning.  We have an itty bitty-aged (thru 2nd grade) kids’ group who sang, “Mary Had a Baby”.  My daughter was in this one and they were just too cute for words.  We also have a KFC (Kids for Christ) who did a skit as well as a Youth FOG team (Focus on God) who did a drama to Mary Did You Know.  My three boys were spread between these two teams.   Again, we are blessed to have a fabulous group of women who work with our kids in these drama productions.  Many thanks to all of you! 

There’s much more I could tell you but it would totally be without pictures and the wordiness of it all would send you right over the edge.  So, that means it’s your turn!  Link your post below to join the fun!

BTW – this week’s prize is a $20 gift card to Amazon.com.  They’ve got some amazing gold box deals right now so no doubt you can find something for yourself or one you love!