I hope your Christmas was wonderful. You may still be visiting family, or still cleaning up Christmas bows and boxes, or dealing with post-Christmas blues, or maybe you’re traveling home today. Wherever today finds you, I hope it’s a golden day for you.

The light this time of year seems especially magical, and I love to take in winter’s golden sunsets, just like yesterday’s:

Today’s post revisits the color gold: golden stars, gold haloes, gifts of gold. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Merry Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying time with your family and friends, as well as taking time to ponder the great gift of Christ’s birth and promise of His return.

Today, we continue the colors of Christmas series with gold, and there’s even a golden little brain teaser for you at the end of this post. I’ve got Burl Ives’ “Silver and Gold” going through my head, as I picture Yukon Cornelius failing time and again to find gold. (If “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” isn’t a must-see on your list of Christmas TV specials, then you probably won’t know who I’m talking about, but trust me, Yukon Cornelius is the worst gold prospector in the whole world.)

In the song Ives sings, he reminds us that the hunt for material gold isn’t the most important way to celebrate Christmas: “Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold/ Means so much more when I see/ Silver and Gold decorations on every Christmas tree.”

This gold star tops our Christmas tree.

It’s hard to imagine Christmas without gold decorations, especially stars to remind us of the one that appeared over the manger in Bethlehem where Christ was born, the same star that led the wise men to Jesus.

So it’s only natural at Christmas to think of stars and halos and even a box full of gold given to Jesus in honor of his birth.

The baby Jesus is often depicted with a golden halo to signify his holiness.

An angel my mother painted, complete with golden halo

A wise man brings a gift of gold to the holy family.

These nativity figures come from a set my mother hand-painted for me, and to me, they are my most golden Christmas decorations because of the story they tell and also because of the love and time my mother put into creating them for me. Sure, I have lots of other Christmas decorations, but few mean nearly as much to me as this nativity set.

And I think that’s why Burl Ives’ singing about “Silver and Gold” is a great reminder of what’s important in this season. It’s not the material gifts or the fancy, super-expensive toys that make this season wonderful. It’s the time spent celebrating and remembering the birth of Christ, and enjoying time with your family to honor traditions and create new golden memories that you and your family will cherish for years to come.

Do you have a golden memory you’d like to share here? I and my readers would love to hear it!

A golden brain teaser to clear the post-shopping, post-turkey fog
I’m going to leave you today with a little brain teaser. My husband gave me this card (below) as part of a set of greeting cards in my stocking yesterday, and looking at these cards was a golden moment in our day together.

You see, each card has a different message written into the card’s design, and my husband and I spent much longer than either of us expected simply sitting next to one another trying to figure out the message hidden in each different card. Can you figure out the message of this golden card? Ok, I know it’s really a yellow card, but play along with me anyway.

I’ll give you a few days to guess, and then I’ll post the answer. [2017 update: No fair guessing in the comments if you guessed correctly back when I first posted this in 2012. Unfortunately, these cards are no longer available, but I cherish the memory of the gift.]

A golden exercise for your mind: I hope it’s something you all can say this season.

If you’ve figured out the message, reply in the comments below with the answer. While you’re there, I’d love to hear about a favorite golden Christmas memory or decoration that you cherish.