Merry Christmas!

One angel declared the news that gave the whole world a reason to REJOICE!   "A savior has been born to you; He is Christ the LORD!" Luke 2:11     Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.  Rejoice in the birth of our savior.  We will be praising Jesus and enjoying each moment with our families in His holy presence.  

Done being PC

Sorry, I'm not sorry.  Stop reading if you're offended easily.

I'm done being politically correct and having to tip toe around the fact that we're celebrating CHRISTMAS, not a holiday.  It's a CHRISTMAS tree, not a holiday tree.  In my state, our governor has deemed the tree in the state house a holiday tree in order to make everyone happy  

...BUT there's a menorah in the state house too. 

No one is calling the menorah a candelabra, are they?   

  

People find it disrespectful to call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree.

Well, what about the people who find it disrespectful to call a Christmas tree a holiday tree? 

Isn’t the tree part of the Christmas celebration? 

If people don’t want to celebrate Christmas then why would they put a Christmas tree up anyways? 

I don’t celebrate Hanukkah so I don’t have a menorah, simple as that.  Now, if I did want to have a menorah, I wouldn’t disrespect the Jewish community and call it a candelabra.

Now let’s get a little deeper here... if you don’t believe in Jesus then why celebrate Christmas in the first place?  Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth.  The birth of our savior.  So, again, if you don’t believe in it then why celebrate that holiday?  Christians don’t celebrate non Christian holidays so why are non Christians celebrating Christian ones?  If we start there then it could remove all the other unnecessary crap. 

I have an issue with people who don’t believe in God trying to turn the celebration of Christ's birth into a secular holiday.  And it's not even about the tree, it's about people trying their hardest to remove

CHRIST from CHRISTmas. 

How does the world get so far off base?  How do you start with a religious holiday and turn it into a day to focus solely on ripping open presents and not even have one mention of the true meaning of the day, of the season, of the reason?  Shame on them. 

Now I understand that people all have different beliefs and that's fine by me.  I know the truth and that's what I live by, but how dare the non-believers try to take one of the most precious days in all history and turn it into something that it's not and take the focus away from the true reason.  Jesus' birth is a historic event, he's not some made up character from a fairy tale, yet people are trying to demean it.

In my house we celebrate Jesus, not Santa.  We talk about the reason for the holiday, Olivia knows that the reason she receives presents on Christmas is because we're celebrating the day that God gave us the greatest gift of all, his son.  His son who was born, lived and died for us and our sins.  We minister on Christmas and serve food to the homeless.  We donate toys to shelters and pray for people and mankind.  We do all these things in Jesus' name, to honor him. 

I guess the moral of the story here is this - in my house, we live the truth.  No one can take that away from me.  But, if I run into you in the store during this CHRISTMAS season, you won’t be getting a "happy holidays" from me, I'll be proudly saying "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

(there have been a few events that have triggered this post.  I'm not sorry if you're offended because I've encountered many situations where I've been offended and I feel this needed to be said)

SWW

It's Wednesday again and you all know what that means.  I'm linking up with Shannon from Life After I Dew for her So What! Wednesday series.   This week I'm saying So What! if...   ~ I'm still hoping to get more responses and advice in regards to yesterdays post.  There are a few women who go to my church that read my blog so I'm hoping they will chime in.  I received a few heartfelt emails that I have yet to respond to and I'm so, so thankful for them.   ~ Olivia is constantly amazing me with things she does and says.  She's so, so smart!  We talk to her about everything and last night she grabbed a pillow and blanket, laid down on the fireplace and told me she was "waiting for Santa and Jesus' birthday!"  I know she understands who Santa is but I didn't know she understood the details! 

Don't mind the fancy baby gate in the fireplace.  O is obsessed with going into the fireplace, throwing her toys in there etc. etc. etc.  We got tired of having a 2 year old covered in soot... so hence, the baby gate.

~ I'm excited for our upcoming busy weekend - family Christmas party, nephews birthday party, dance, church and family time.   ~ We took Olivia to LaSalette last night and let her stay up way past her bedtime.  She loved it and we're the parents so we can break the rules!  

LaSalette 2012

~ The bottom half of our Christmas tree has no ornaments on it.  I mean, it DID at one time but there's this certain someone who lives in my house and happens to be right about that height that has assumed the ornaments as new toys for her to play with.    ~ I wrapped all of Olivia's Christmas presents and feel like I need to buy her more.  It's this weird balance between knowing she has enough and wanting to give her the world.   

Weekend Recap - decking the halls

This weekend was full of Christmas decorating, church, birthday parties and family time.  We tagged our Christmas tree a few weeks ago, brought it home last weekend and it's been sitting in the garage in its stand waiting for everyone to be home to decorate.  I am dead set on making this a fun family tradition that Olivia will always remember, I wanted to have special snacks, hot chocolate, Christmas music and we did just that.  Just us, the tree, the ambiance and the ornaments.    I gave Olivia an early bath, dressed her in her Christmas jammies, poured a little bowl of red and green M&M's and brought out the ornaments.  Olivia was SO excited! 

I swear this picture could be me as a child, Olivia looks just like me.

 We have tons of special ornaments - Olivia's first Christmas, my first Christmas, ornaments of Olivia's favorite characters like Minnie, Elmo and Cookie Monster.  My all time favorite, the Grinch, ornaments I made as a child etc etc etc.  It was so fun to see Olivia marvel over each one and play with them.  A few of her favorites are no longer on the tree since she seems to think that they're toys.  We even took the Grinch ornament to church Sunday night because she insisted.     The night was perfect.  Olivia truly had a blast decorating and I love that she actually gets it this year.  She talked about baby Jesus and Santa and she knows that the reason Santa brings us some presents for Christmas is to celebrate Jesus' birthday.   Last year we bought Olivia a little people nativity set and we're going to put that up tonight.  I'm praying for the right words to explain the true meaning of Christmas.     

Tagging the tree

Every year for as long as I can remember my family and I have gone to a local Christmas Tree farm to tag our tree.  Buying one from a parking lot just doesn't have the same appeal as walking through the "forest" and choose the perfect one for our home.  This year was no different.  After church we piled into the car, stopped at Dunkin Donuts for obligatory hot chocolate or coffee and munchkins and were on our way.    Since Olivia is older now, this year was fun.  She was able to walk through the tree farm with us and help choose our tree... all while picking up sticks and rocks and pinecones along the way.    She fell in love with this little Charlie Brown tree that was just her size.... we may get her one for her bedroom this year.  I think she'll love it!     We finally found our tree.    My Dad and Husband were so funny trying to convince each other that this tree was "the one".     Their conversation went like this...    Dad - "it's perfect" Husband - "no bare spots" Dad - "just the right height" Husband - "not to big" Dad - "not too small" Husband - "not too wide" Dad - "not too narrow"   When they were done discussing the physical attributes of our future Christmas tree we tied on our tag and signature tree tagging penguin (see pics) and took some pictures to mark the occasion.       

I adore this picture of Olivia and her Papa (my dad).  She loves him SO SO much!

   Our tree tagging adventure was a success.  Now, let's just hope that we can find our tree when it's time to pick it up!