Last night before bed I read the kids "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Elijah's heard the book many times, Sophia, probably not at all. When we got to the end, when the Whos all go out and sing despite the fact that they had no presents or "Who feast" I took the opportunity (like any good parent) to point out that Christmas is not about presents. I went on to point out that it's about spending time with your family and before I could elaborate any further Elijah pipes up with, "And it's about celebrating the birth of baby Jesus!" Ha, who doesn't love being put in their place by their five year old? And he's right, of course, as Christians that is the number one reason why we celebrate Christmas. It was just really cute coming from him, in that moment. It's always good to realize that your child actually gets it sometimes, you know?
This time of year there is a lot of emphasis on the word "believe". At the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade that was their tagline. Of course, they mean believe in the magic of Christmas, in Santa. We don't particularly "do" Santa around here. And for a moment or two I kind of felt bad, was I letting my kids miss out on what can be a really cool tradition of believing in something magical like Santa? For me, the answer is no, since we are teaching him to believe. Not in the magic, but in the miracle of Jesus' birth. When I brought this up to Matthew he also pointed out, that Jesus was something our kids could believe in their whole life, too, not just at Christmas, not just as innocent children, but forever.
"And they will call him Emmanuel, which means "God with us"" Matthew 1:23
=)
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