Letters to Grandma: Christmas

The Christmas season was wild and crazy. Each year it seems is a bit different. While I would love to have solid traditions, such as making the same meals for Christmas Eve, Christmas breakfast Christmas dinner, attending the same Mass, celebrating with Shannon's family on a specific day, etc. it simply has not worked out that way. And that's okay. It inspires a bit of creativity!

This year, I was a bit anxious about spending time with family. Sometimes the dynamics can be a bit overwhelming. So I prayed that God would show me what to do. He did. It was amazingly clear too. A few of us came down with a horrid cold a couple days before Christmas and Max threw up on the way to Midnight Mass. So we stayed home Christmas day. It was quiet, but that was good. It actually was really good! Shannon asked that next time I pray that I be a little more specific. He could have done without all the sick-business.

I always feel a bit melancholy when Christmas is over. It certainly helps that we celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, though. We still have one more day left. Since it is Dominic's birthday, the Christmas season will end with one final party! Yay!

This could be a post unto itself; it was my happiest Christmas moment.

Kath and Michaela were taking care of a neighbor's farm over the holidays.

Another lady, Cassie, that lives on the farm lost her dog a couple days before Christmas.

She has been so busy caring for her 90+-year-old mother that she didn't have time to prepare for the season. Cassie is an example of how we should care for our elderly family. Instead of sticking her mother in a nursing home, and I realize this is the only option at times, she devotes her days (and nights) to her care. She makes sure she goes for daily walks so she stays ambulatory, she reads to her, feeds her, she does everything for her, simply loving her in her inability to care for herself. Cassie is an amazing witness to the dignity of life.

So, her dog dies a couple days before Christmas and my girls partake in the the whole event ~ Michaela staying with the mother while the dog was taken to the vet, Kath driving to the vet,

just being a listening ear while strong Cassie cries, simply being present.

Upon their arrival home, Kath starts putting together a plate of cookies.

In my busyness, I had never even thought to take a plate to Cassie.

Then, the older kiddos began planning decorations for Cassie's house.

They chopped off a little fir, snuck decorations from our tree, grabbed some Christmas material for a tree skirt, found an extra string of lights, robbed a Nativity set from one of the bedrooms (what's Christmas without baby Jesus?), wrapped up a couple gifts and headed down to the farm.

I was touched by my children's thoughtfulness.

When they returned with tears in their voices, I knew they had learned what Christmas is

about in a new way, a bigger way. The complete gift of self that Christ gave us on that very first Christmas Eve was no longer symbolic. It had become real to them. They saw Jesus in a suffering soul and responded with all their heart.