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. Continue reading →
During this busy season, I’m revisiting a favorite Christmas series from 2012. I love Christmas decorations, and it seems even the most mundane everyday objects are trying to put on their Christmas finery these days:
A fire hydrant dresses in its Christmas best.
Even trees by the river are getting decked out for the season (with a little help from a Christmas fan). My husband usually spots these first, and I turn giddy when I hear these outdoor decorations have gone up for the year. Continue reading →
I love that the first day of Advent 2017 began for me with a blazing white shooting star in the early morning sky and ended with the rise of this year’s only supermoon.
December’s superman with a few city lights below
It felt fitting, then, that I might begin this busy season by thinking about the color white. Or rather, revisiting that color. After all, white was the first in a 2012 series I shared with you celebrating the colors of Christmas. Maybe these posts will feel like old friends, or perhaps something new will speak to you this time around. I hope you’ll enjoy them throughout this month and slow down at least a little to ponder the colors of this season.
Ah, Christmas. Another one has come and gone. You’ve opened your presents (perhaps already returning one or two). If you hosted Christmas at your home, your refrigerator is probably starting to have some space in it again, though your freezer may still be stuffed.
Some of you may have taken down your Christmas decorations and packed them away until next year, ready to be done with the holidays. Removing decorations at our house often depends on my husband’s schedule, but I love to leave them up until Three Kings Day/Epiphany.
The book of Matthew tells us of one more party after Christ’s birth, one last hurrah, before things got really tough for Jesus and Mary and Joseph (and for their neighbors, too). The story centers on the arrival of the magi.
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship him.” … and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. — Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11
When we think of the magi, we envision kings and crowns and camels and three presents, and that’s often how nativity scenes depict them.
A small percentage of you chose the wisemen as your favorite figures in the nativity, and I, too, love the kings and camels in my own nativity set. (You can see the kings and one of the camels in a post from three years ago here.) Several of my favorite Christmas decorations center on the three kings: Continue reading →
What happened to December? I blinked, and here we are right at the brink of Christmas. My to-do list feels manageable most days until there’s a delay I wasn’t counting on—like a sick pup earlier this week (she’s getting better). Or the morning spent sitting trapped in a parking lot for 20 minutes waiting for a some-might-argue useless valet to point me to an empty space. All so I could go inside and wait another 30 minutes at the big ham store. (The inside line went much faster than I was expecting, but the ‘bah-humbugger’ in me had already taken over.)
Anyway, Christmas is coming, whether we get everything done just the way we want.
When I polled you a couple of weeks back about your favorite nativity figures, the overwhelming majority of you said your favorites are Jesus, Mary and Joseph (aka the holy family).
Today, let’s remember that Christmas can be as simple as celebrating the birth of the Savior. And also honoring the young man and young woman who traveled to Bethlehem and, while there, brought Him into the world.
Of all my nativity scenes, these two versions of the holy family are my favorite. The one above because of its simplicity and the one below because my mother painted them for me as part of a larger nativity set.
Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. —Luke 2:4-7
Merry Christmas, my friends! I hope your travels will be easy, your joys immeasurable and your heart light in the coming days. Even if you still have to wait in line at the big ham store.
A question for you: if the baby Jesus is separate from the manger in your nativity, do you put Him in there as soon as you put up the rest of your nativity? Or do you wait until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?
The Flourishing Tree 