When I was a child, Christmas was full of excitement and anticipation. It was full of the usual sights and scents of a 1970’s New Jersey Christmas. There were holiday displays at the stores with white snowmen, red Santas, manger scenes, and Hannukah Manorahs. The neighbor’s homes were decked out with colorful lights, making evening drives in the early dark of winter a real spectacle. Our own home smelled of the fresh evergreen tree my father had chopped down, which my mother and we children had decorated with ornaments treasured from year to year. In later years, my father grew the trees himself, and all the adult children came home each year to select and saw down a tree for their own families.
The distinctive smell of the fir tree was not the only smell in the home of my childhood. My mother was a wonderful cook! All kinds of baking and cooking took place during the month of December. Breakfasts of sausages, bacon and eggs warmed us up after coming inside from doing our winter farm chores. And we always made my grandmother’s crisp, lemony butter cookies. We used cookie cutters to make shapes of stars and bells and circles, and sprinkled them with yellow, blue, green and red colored sugar. But the most special treat of all was the Christmas morning stollen, a wonderful sweet bread filled with raspberry jam, chopped nuts, and cinnamon sugar and drizzled with a vanilla glazed icing. No Christmas was complete without it!
While my parents enthusiastically participated in everything that made this season special, they also intentionally made room in this season to ensure we children understood the reason our family celebrated this holiday. They wanted us to know about the baby born in Bethlehem centuries ago who was said to be Emmanuel, God with us. Born to die for the sin of the world. Born to give us hope and peace with God.
So they set aside one evening a week (usually Saturday nights) for the 5 weeks before Christmas Day. That night was set aside for reading the Christmas story from the Bible and an accompanying children’s devotional, one part each night. They began with the prophecies of Emmanuel’s birth in Isaiah and Micah. After reading the Bible story, we would light a candle on our homemade advent wreath, turn out the lights, and sing Christmas hymns and carols by candlelight. Each child had a turn in choosing their favorite song to sing. Then the lights came back on and we would eat a special treat my mother had baked. Rarely, if there hadn’t been time to bake, we had pizza and soda, which we kids loved, too! Sometimes we played a game to complete our festive night!
In this way my parents, through their work and determination, gave their children fun and happy memories in which to couch the important truths they wished to teach us. They involved all our senses: taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch. We were immersed in the experience! It took effort and time on their part. But by making it fun, they ensured we children enjoyed it. They were fully taking advantage of the relatively small window of time they had with us when we were young enough to gather together in one place, before the teenage years of sports and driving and work took place, which would make these kinds of gatherings almost impossible. The years they did invest in our family Advent tradition have had an ongoing influence and impact in our lives which continues to this day. It reaches down through the years to their children’s children and beyond, each family shaping their own traditions to meet each family’s needs.
This Christmas season, be intentional. Make a plan to spend time together as a family, make memories, continue your own family traditions, and tell the story of Jesus’ birth to the next generation!