This Christmas

Christmas has always been a very special times for me, just like it has been for so many others. As a kids, it meant listening to my mom read "The Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve night, waking up to presents Christmas morning and then a big breakfast. I grew up in a very small family, so Christmas Day was usually a low key affair.

As I have grown up, my wife and I have started our own traditions. Now I am the one reading "The Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve night after we get home from the Christmas Boat Parade at with her family. I never lost that child like excitement for Christmas morning and opening presents and listening to Christmas music. In recent years I have enjoyed watching me wife open her presents much more than I have enjoyed opening mine. Then it is off to her parents house for more presents with her siblings and a big Christmas breakfast. This Christmas Breakfast has been one of my favorite parts of Christmas the last several years. This is one of the few times that my wife and her 3 siblings all sit down together at the same time. With everyone having such busy and hectic schedules, it just doesn't happen that often. So on Christmas morning they make up for it. The laughter starts before we sit down and doesn't stop for a long time. It is so nice to be together and share so much happiness.

This Christmas, however will be so different on so many levels. We are still planning on going to the boat parade, and reading "The Night Before Christmas", and having Christmas breakfast, but they will all feel different. I mean that in a good way though.

One of my all time favorite Christmas movies is "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." (the animated one, not the Jim Carey one). I watch it several times during the Christmas season, as well as read the book. I caught something in the movie this year that I hadn't picked up before. At the very end of the movie as the Grinch is cutting the roast beast, the narrator is speaking. Here is what he says;

"Christmas day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas day will always be,
just as long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas while we stand,
Heart to heart and hand in hand."

These lines really hit me hard. This Christmas is not about the tree or the decorations or the presents. It is about the people. It is about the people near and far that I feel blessed to have as friends. It is about my family who have made me the person I am today.

Years from now I will look back at this Christmas and the remember the best gifts to be the dozens of Christmas cards, phone calls and emails of support form friends and family across the country. My memories will not be of the presents I open, but of the people I get to share the day with. Most of all, I will remember how lucky I am to be able to celebrate with such amazing people and feel so blessed that God has given the opportunity to do so.

I hope you and yours have a Very Merry and Blessed Christmas.