The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud, for all to hear.
We've all heard this quote right? If you haven't, I highly suggest that you flip on your tv, and go check out the movie, "Elf." It's literally one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time. It's so hilarious and I find myself enjoying different parts of the movie each year I watch it. It's a family tradition.
I wanted to talk to you about tradition.
My husband and I got married last year in June, and shortly after that my parents moved to Florida some thousand of miles away from us. Now, for me, Christmas is kind of a big deal. My family has traditions out the wazoo. For my husband, however, Christmas had more of a biblical principle more than anything else....not suprising coming from a pastor's kid. :)
So, our first Christmas together was....confusing and hard. Why? Because our traditions were different. Take this story for example.
Every year since I was baby, my family would have our annual Christmas tree decorating night. We would put on Christmas music, decorate the tree - dad does lights, ladies do ornaments - and then we'd watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Well Ethan and I...didn't. Our tree sat bare for the majority of the holiday season until I frustratingly decided to decorate the tree myself. To my dismay, I couldn't get the lights to look like my dads. I remember him specifically saying "you just push them in, to make your tree look pre-lit." Now just picture a frustrated 20 year old woman frantically pushing in Christmas lights, breaking a sweat, getting scratched, cursing under her breath, and on the verge of tears while an innocent husband looked on.
Then my knight and shining armor came....and I cried some more. The lights were NOT pushed in! They did NOT look like my dad's! And if I'm telling you the truth, our lights on our tree this year still do NOT look like my dad's.
So as I set on the couch balling my eyes out, reminiscing the memory of my own family traditions, my sweet husband sat next to me and tried to comfort me, having no idea why I was crying. "My....dad.....usually..d.d.d...does....the....lights." I managed to sob out in a hot mess.
And do you know what my sweet, wise, Godly, husband said.
"We will learn to make our own traditions."
And we have.
Every Thanksgiving we go see a movie, every Christmas we end up giving each other our presents way early, we watch "Elf", we do things our way, and are still figuring everything else out.
And as we decorated the Christmas tree this December, I found myself thinking back on our last Christmas tree, and discovered something new.
Every year, Ethan has done the lights, and they have been Ethan's lights. Sure, they aren't pushed in, and they are quirky, and soooooo Ethan. But they are his lights. His contribution to Christmas. And I realized that it didn't matter what we did to celebrate Christmas.
We could have a family paintball fight, we could give each other the most horrendous presents, or we could basically do everything we do now. So long as did them, in the Spirit of Christmas, it would matter. It would make Christmas. We would feel Christmas.
Remember, it's not about what you do, how great your tree looks, or if your stockings are hung in a row. It's why you do, and that you do it, in the Spirit of Christmas.
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