Simple Christmas

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, celebrating the birth of my Savior is one of the most exciting times of the year.  However, for many Christians, and for non-believers as well, Christmas tends to be a stressful time of year. I am determined that not be true for our family. The American Dream has stolen the joy of celebrating the miraculous birth of our Savior who laid aside his rights as God and became flesh in order to provide the way for salvation to a helpless and hopeless, fallen world. It makes me mad how Christians get mad over stores selling "Holiday trees" or only saying "Happy Holidays," but they are no different from the rest of the world in their Christmas celebrations except for the fact that the post "I'm keeping Christ in CHRISTmas" to their facebook statuses.
Through what God has been teaching me, there were somethings I wanted to change about our Christmas celebrations this year.
1. Celebrate Advent. I'm not talking about the kind where you open a little box or envelope and get some piece of candy or other trinket. I'm talking about the kind where you emphasize the "coming" (which is what Advent means) of the Savior both in flesh as a little baby and His triumpant return. I'm a little behind on this one. I want to create a banner with an envelope for each letter of "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" (I know that it is 25 letters, but one extra won't hurt.) I'm going to put a verse with a special corresponding activity for each envelope.
2. Cut down on the gift giving. I just feel guilty getting more stuff when I already have so much, and all the people to whom I would give gifts are in the same boat. Let's face it. Even most of the poor in America have way more than we really need.  Our family decided that we would only get gifts for the children and use the money we would have spent on ourselves to bless those who are in need.

We are doing this in addition to some of the things we are already doing like we give only 3 gifts to our children. We don't do the whole Santa thing. (To read more about this, read last year's post )
With all this, Christmas feels a lot more simple, more real, more pure. I know there is more we can do to focus our minds are the truth of Christmas, so I'll just keep praying that the Lord continue to make the changes in me that He needs to in order to do that.