A New Christmas

Christmas has come and, once again, I have gotten more than I deserve. We have been blessed by loving parents/grandparents and Kaleb is already rotten - to say the least. We are very appreciative of the outpouring of love shown through Christmas gifts. But I realized that I had to make a conscious effort to bring Jesus into it...and I was terrible at it. After ripping through presents all morning, we got in the car to go to Eric's house and I said something along the lines of, "Oh! You do know that we celebrate Christmas because of Jesus right?" That was the extent of how we incorporated Jesus into His own holiday! Pitiful. I mean, we've talked about Jesus and the wise men and the story leading up to Christmas, but when we ask whose birthday it was, Kaleb said Santa Claus. I'm going to be honest, I felt awful! I don't really want to do the big Santa Claus thing. And by that I mean, when we were growing up, along with presents under the tree, we would wake up and find the big gifts from Santa. It was exciting and ridiculously fun, but I don't think we're going to do it. We'll probably have Santa fill stockings, but gifts are going to come from family. Next year, instead of a lot of presents, I think we're going to try to limit it to just a few presents (3-5 total per family) and then do some service activities like baking cookies to take to a shelter or giving away a gift for every one he gets. Like, I said, I am totally overwhelmed by how much Kaleb is loved by his family and it is a true testament to the loving nature of our parents. I guess I'm just feeling guilty for falling into the trap of making Christmas all about presents and Santa Claus instead of Jesus. Eric and I are going to decide what to do for next year then I'm going do a post about what we choose and why. I just know we have to do better.