Reason(s) for the Season

Well friends, I hope you all had lovely Christmases this year, wherever you spent them. Even though it started out just cloudy and rainy, we ended up getting a little bit of white stuff here in Davidson. :)

There's no doubt Christmas is a hectic time of year, but also inevitable are the requests to remember the "reason for the season." (Namely, the birth of Jesus of course.) These reminders are good, I think, since it's awfully easy to get wrapped up (Ha. Wrapped up? Like a present? Anyway...) in the excitement of Santa, gift-giving, and the host of other secularized traditions. I've been thinking about it though, this year...maybe all the hooplah still has it's benefits. I mean, don't get me wrong, I avoid malls as best I can in December and sometimes all the money people spend on each other seems a bit ridiculous. But Christmas Eve after church, I sat in the kitchen with my parents and brother talking about random stories from our childhood, thinking about how nice it was that we all were sitting there doing that. I feel like even though obviously the reason Christmas exists is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, maybe the not-so-religious traditions can be a benefit of the season too. I'm of the opinion that God means for us to be in community with each other, so having a big turkey dinner (or a brunch, in the case of this year for the Wehrungs) can't hurt, right?

This of course assumes that one has a family with said traditions...or that one has a "family" (whatever that may mean) in the first place. Over at Preston Taylor Ministries (roommate Mary Kate works there), they substituted their traditional angel tree for a "nativity store," where parents of kids in their programs could come pick out gifts and buy them (for a small fee). The idea was to empower the parents, and to eliminate the need for them to rely on the charity (at least as far as Christmas is concerned) of other people simply giving them gifts. We YAVs went over to help with one of the stores on a Sunday night, and it was really incredible to see how much the parents appreciated it being able to be actively involved in what their kids would get on Christmas morning. Maybe if this whole idea of gift giving every December 25th had never been thought up, these parents wouldn't have gotten to experience that. Of course this doesn't mean all of their hardships are solved, but it's something, I suppose.

So maybe this is all just me rambling, but it's just what I've been thinking about these past few days.
See you in 2011!
Love,
Allison