Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Aftermath of Christmas

I love Christmas, it is one of my absolute favorite holidays!  Really I love all the Fall holidays, so I am a happy girl from October through the end of December.  And what's not to love? Quality family time and lots of good food. 
The thing with Christmas though, we plan and shop and wrap, waiting to see the sparkle of joy in our little ones eyes when they rush down the stairs and over to the gloriously decorated tree, and then in just about 30 seconds, its over.  All the gifts have been opened, all the carefully chosen gift wrap is shredded all over the floor, and if you are like me, you are exhausted because you stayed up until 1am or later to make the magic happen! 
Now I have been seeing around the world wide interwebs lately, we should make Christmas last all year.  Which if you take that literally, it is a terrifying notion.  My crazies would love it because, hey, who doesn't want to live a Christmas version of Groundhogs Day? I, however, and probably most moms out there, would want to bury myself in a spider free hole in the ground until I found a way to make it stop.  I think what that means, is to live in the spirit of Christmas, reveling in joy and peace and love.  Remembering every day that God sent his Son to Earth as a fragile baby to teach us those things.  We wait for that one day to marvel in wonder that the Creator of the Universe gave us the greatest gift of all.  When we should live every single day in awe of His grace and mercy to us.
 In Luke 2:19, "But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart." While Mary and Joseph's Christmas aftermath was a little different then ours, she gave birth to Jesus, and then much like us, hosted several visitors, received gifts, and probably had to clean up after everyone, yet she still managed to hold on to the spirit of the occasion.  Although it might have been slightly easier since the reason for the season was snuggled close to her heart.  Perhaps, if we snuggled a little closer to our Savior, the spirit of Christmas could live in us all year.

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