December Daily - December 1

This is the December 1 assignment from the Holidays in Hand class I took from Jessica Sprague.

May your walls know joy,
may every room hold laughter,
and every window open to great possibility. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

"Write your thoughts about your family's holiday values."

This year, my holiday values have really taken on new meaning. My youngest nephew's 13-year-old very best friend died in a horribly tragic accident just before Thanksgiving. An old schoolmate of mine, who I just saw a month ago, died in his sleep of a heart attack. I'm trying to bring comfort another long, long time friend as he's basically on "death watch" with his mother. Things that make me realize that holiday celebrations aren't about the food, presents and parties -- the celebrations are about the people in my life - my family and my friends.

As we approach the Christmas holiday, I want to remember the real reason we celebrate (we being my family, not the "royal" we). We celebrate Christmas to remember the incarnation of Christ. We celebrate because He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might have the righteousness of God in Him. We remember that He who was rich became poor, that He made Himself nothing and took on a servant's nature.

We give gifts to one another because God gave us the greatest gift. There is a quote by Sigrid Undset that I use on my Christmas letters each year and I love it - if you've read this blog for any length of time, you probably already know it:

"And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself."

Our photograph today is a "welcome to December" family photo and will open my December Daily/Holidays in Hand album. It is the photo we're using for our family Christmas card and was taken at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga the first week of November.

On our "to Do" list today is finish decorating the tree though because of issues with the lights on our pre-lit tree we're just beginning to decorate the tree. And since we're decorating the tree I decided we'd skip the "something to make" part of today's assignment. (that's legal for those of you who think I'm ditching part of the class!)

The remember prompt for today is "What is your earliest holiday memory?" I'm not sure it's my "earliest" memory, but it is from my childhood... When I was a kid, we had a white, flocked Christmas tree. We didn't put lights on it, but we did have a spotlight on the floor with a rotating colored plastic disk. The light shined toward the tree and the disk rotated, changing the color of light shining on the tree (a lot of people used those on silver tinsel trees). We had gold satin balls, gold tinsel garland and the tree-topper was a gold star with an angel on it. Very simple, and very traditional.