Magical Christmases...Never Forgotten...

I don't know why I didn't write a Christmas post last year.  Perhaps it was because I wrote a Christmas letter and just left it at that.  But, as I was contemplating the many Christmases past, a memory came into my mind that I feel I must write down.  So, here is my contribution, though late, for Christmas.

 

                                       

                                                  Magical Christmas

I miss the "Magic" of Christmas!  I remember, as a child, there were so many wonders that just could not be explained...except with one word..."SANTA!"  One of those memories will forever live in my heart as I have grown up to grasp another wonder of Christmas...the true "Reason for the Season"...Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior's birth.

When we were children, my brother and I, we couldn't wait for daddy to bring home the most beautiful blue spruce Christmas tree he could find on Christmas eve day.  He would bring it through the door, plop it down on the floor in front of our living room window and there it would stay for the rest of the day.  I remember looking at that tree and imagining in my child's eye, just how beautiful it would be with all of the decorations on it.

On Christmas Eve, Mama would read us the story of the Birth of the Christ Child from the Bible.  We would drink hot chocolate and eat Christmas cookies or a candy cane.  While we had a warm home filled with love, I thought about that first Christmas morning.  It was a cold, unadorned stable.  Its only light was from a bright and heavenly star shining high above.

Everything in the world would change, even that stark little scene, at the moment of His birth.  A King was born that night in that cold stable.  His mother would place Him in a manger filled with straw.  And the stable was filled with His light.  That night, a miracle occurred!

"When are you going to decorate the tree?" I would ask my mother.

"Oh, no, I don't decorate the tree!  It will be decorated by Santa's elves while you are sleeping."

I accepted mama's explanation, and would go to bed with wonder in my head and envisioning the little elves who would come with Santa and while he was placing presents, they would decorate our tree.  I found it very hard to fall asleep.

On Christmas morning, my brother and I would be the first ones awake and we would run to the living room to see what miracles had occurred while we were sleeping.  I always stopped short, in front of the tree.  It wasn't the presents that caught my eye, it was the miraculous transformation that the tree made overnight.  It was beautifully decorated from bottom to top and there was always a bright gleaming star on the very top.  Each branch had very carefully laid tinsel/ice cycles.  It was a work of art and took my breath away.  This was our own Christmas Miracle.

I will never forget those Christmases etched in the memory of my childhood.  I have tried to duplicate them in my own family...but somehow I didn't have that same magical touch that was there in my early home.  But, more and more lately, as the world drifts farther and farther away from the beauty of the Christ Child on Christmas, the focus in our home is on Him...the first Miracle of Christmas.