A Very Zen Holiday Season

The holidays usually really stress me out, but this year I took a different approach, and it helped so much - I just let it go. Christmas is about celebrating Christ's birth - NOT about making 70,000 loaves of poppy-seed bread for neighbors and friends. NOT about making beautiful, homemade Christmas cards. NOT about having perfect decorations on the house. I worked really hard to push all of the extra crap out of my mind and to just focus on Christ. And it improved the holiday season for me tenfold. If I had time to make poppyseed bread, cool. If not, oh well. If I had time to send out Christmas cards, cool. If not, oh well.

The kids were in a hellfire hurry to get the Christmas tree up and decorated right after Thanksgiving, so we showed them the supplies and told them to have fun. It was awesome. Dylan assembled the tree all by himself:

Ben put the lights on the tree for them, but they did the rest:

I should have taken a picture of their finished product. It was really, really funny-looking. Dylan decided that the best way to make sure an ornament doesn't fall off a branch is to bend it up at a ninety-degree angle. Which works when you have a fake tree. So picture a capital L. The horizontal part is the little branch sticking out. The vertical part is where Dylan bent the branch to ensure that the ornaments stayed on. Soooo funny.

I inherited a buttload of ornaments from my mom, ornaments of many, many different colors. Wayyy too many for one tree. But the kids put every single cotton-pickin' ornament up. Every single fake branch was taken over by an ornament.

I decided that, if I had time, I would re-decorate the tree, after the kids were in bed. But if I never had time, oh well.

Luckily, I did have time. I saw a show on HGTV about decorating your house for Christmas, and I was inspired. So I decided to focus on just a few colors this year. I chose white, gold, and silver. All ornaments that didn't have those main colors were put back into the box for another year. So here is my re-decorated tree:

So pretty. And fun. Next year, the sky is the limit. Maybe red and silver! Or green and gold! Who knows? Some close-ups:

This is one of my favorite ornaments - Big Ben:

And St. Paul's Cathedral:

I picked those up just before I came home from Study Abroad, exactly 13 years ago.

You know, I've always wondered if I should collect something. I've never really collected anything. Perhaps I should collect ornaments. Like, if I ever go on a trip, pick up a cool ornament for my Christmas tree. Good idea, Kar.

By the way, I never got around to making poppyseed bread for anyone but my fam and Nat's fam. I ordered cheap, easy, fast Christmas cards from Walgreens. And the outside of my house was only half-decorated through the month of December. But it still was an amazing Christmas season.

Mind if I wax cheesy? I'm in charge of my ward's bulletin every Sunday, and I was looking for something neat to put on the cover the Sunday before Christmas. I ran into this poem that really touched me. I read the poem on Christmas Eve for our family's little celebration. It brings tears to my eyes:

The Boy and the King

by Virginia Maughan Kammeyer

Oh, see! In the sky! A star! A star!

It shines like radiant bloom - a gem,

Near, and yet afar, afar,

With shining petals and silvery stem.

It seems to grow from the hillside there

Where the oxen and the donkeys share

A cavern stall. And now, behold!

The cave itself seems turned to gold!

And the ass and the ox are looking down

In the stable room that is bright as day.

And in the straw is a baby fair

With an angel face and silken hair.

The beasts are making a joyful sound,

They sing to the child in a lowing tone

As they kneel, they kneel on the trodden ground;

And the doves aloft on their rafter throne

Join in the song with rustling wings.

And a shepherd comes in the singing night

To bring a lamb, all softly white.

And now to the house come riding kings!

Purpled, and jeweled, and bearing gifts.

They open ivory casques, and drifts

Of myrrh and incense fill the air.

Then they bring forth gold, and they pour, they pour

A kingly ransom upon the floor. And I have nothing, nothing at all

For the little one an offering,

For I am the slave who cleans the stall,

And runs to serve at my master's call.

But I fetch a drink from the hillside spring

For the mother of the tiny child.

Her smile is very sweet and mild.

But the babe! The babe! When I look on him

It's as though a sword had pierced my side,

And I wish I could cry it far and wide:

This is the King! The King! The King!

The One we have waited for so long!

Foretold in prophecy and song!

But in the inn my master sleeps

All unknowingly through the night.

He will not wake for this wonderous sight.

And when I tell him he won't believe.

So I will be still and only grieve

That I cannot follow the Holy One.

But someday, surely, when I am free,

My ransom bought, my slavery done,

Oh, then, in prayer to bend the knee

And with a joy that is piercing sweet

Embrace my Lord and kiss his feet.

With tears my eyes shall overflow.

Oh, to see His face! And know! And know!

- Dec. 1973 Ensign

I could go on and on about the beautiful words that the writer chooses to describe Christ's birth, and how they correlate with scenes from his later life, but you aren't my students, and I'm no longer an English teacher. :) Oh, how I love poetry. When I read it to my family on Christmas Eve, I'm pretty sure nobody heard a word. Micah was being a jerk and squealing and running around. And rest of the kids were too little to really understand it. Oh well. Letting it go...