Christmas has been cleaned away from our house.
The tree is down and out on the deck, the lights are packed away, my collection of nativities are snug in their boxes, and I am thrilled with the cleanliness and order of my living room.
I have been accused of being too excited to un-decorate from the Christmas season. Perhaps it is because I start hinting at doing so just after opening all of the presents on Christmas morning? I do admit to loving the process, but not because I am putting away Christmas.
I think I have discovered that what I love about putting away the Christmas decorations is that I have all the time in the world to do it. I can look at each decoration with precious memories of who gave it to us, when and why. The tree in our home is not an interior decorator’s masterpiece, it is a conglomeration of ornaments of sentimentality, tossed on the branches by our trio of children who look at each and reminisce as they hang them precariously on the tips of the branches.
When we decorate for the season, it is a far more rushed affair! This year even more than others, as we struggled for so long to find the time to all go to get a tree from the tree farm. Finally, thanks to a ‘snow day’ on December 19th, we got the tree. Then, on December 22nd, I donned my grumpy pants, and told the men in our house that they had better get that tree in the stand and in the living room before I got home. Then, on December 23rd, I re-wore my grumpy pants and told everyone that they had better be home and unpacking the tree decorations that afternoon … or else! So, by December 25th, I was just thankful that it had gotten done.
And now it is all over. The hustle and the bustle, the wrappings and the unwrappings, the cooking and the eating (and the eating, and the eating).
As I admired each decoration, with memories and stories and love attached. As I placed each representative of the first Christmas story back in it’s packaging, the song of the season for me played again in my heart.
Although I was slow and negligent to prepare the outward elements of the Christmas season, my inner preparations and focus were perfectly clear all season long.
It stared in late November when I encountered this song, as though God himself set it to reverberate in my ears, my brain, my heart, just long enough to know that it was my focus of worshiping Him for this season.
As if to confirm my understanding of the earlier gift of this song from my Creator, as we sat to enjoy our Christmas Day feast together … snow was falling …
“Oh, You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below”
itsawonderfilledlife 