Stop for a minute.
Yes, Christmas Day is now over, but don’t hurry to box up the ornaments and purge the regalia from your home!
Recently on December 26 a national morning show featured an “expert” happily talking about packing away decorations and properly disposing of your Christmas tree. “It’s time to move on” was the message.
But I want to suggest a different message.
Before you move on from Christmas, take time to savor the hope and joy of the message, to savor the meaning of this miraculous moment.
The word savor is often associated with a fine meal and it means letting food linger on your palate so you can fully enjoy the flavors. Meditate might be an appropriate synonym for savor in the spiritual realm. Another synonym is ponder.
In liturgical churches such as Anglican, Episcopalian, Catholic and some more traditional Protestant churches, Christmas is celebrated for 12 days from December 25 through January 6. Sadly, by then most of us are weary of the perpetual commercial messages promoting shallow cheer because we’ve been inundated with seasonal merchandise and music since before Thanksgiving.
The real message and truth of this annual season is worthy to be savored. Now that the false Christmas content has ceased, it’s an opportunity for true disciples of Jesus to savor His arrival in our darkened world.
Letting the moments of remembering Christ’s birth linger allows the stupendous meaning of this pivotal event to settle more deeply in our souls.
So I hope you will join me in slowing down this week and allow the true message to linger longer. Keep the Christmas music playing. Allow the lights and the sparkle to remind you for a few more days that the Light of the World has come and most importantly will come again!
And as you take down your decorations here are three ways to savor the arrival of Jesus.
- With each ornament you remove from your tree, ask your children to name a gift Jesus has given and say “I’m thankful Jesus gave me …”
- Evaluate your décor and find things you can leave up for a while longer. I keep out all my bottle brush trees into January because they are more wintry than they are Christmasy.
- Keep twinkle lights up or find new places to use them for the month of January. One of the happiest of all our decorating is the use of Christmas lights which remind us Jesus is the Light of the World. There is no reason to take them down, especially the clear or white ones because again they remind us of Who Jesus is in our dark world.
May you and yours savor the Savior a little longer this season.
If you didn’t have the opportunity to read all my “Newborn Babe” series, last week, these would give you a great opportunity to savor the Christmas message:
“The Newborn Babe Is the Lion of Judah”
“The Newborn Babe is the Savior”
“The Newborn Babe is the Mediator”
Are you still selling products? If so I am having a hard time locating them. I have a catalog from 2015 and would love to see what you have available.
Blessings to you!
Angela
Hi Angela,
All of our items are now listed in our Etsy store, which you can find here.
Growing up we celebrated and decorated much different than most. We didn’t have a tree, but we had a few reminders of the season scattered around our small two story farm house. One of the centerpieces was a wall where we would tape up every Christmas card we received. As a child I loved looking at them, counting them, reading them, and memorizing who sent which card. Our celebrations centered around our gatherings that started on Christmas Eve with immediate family, then Christmas Day with extended family from my mom’s side, and then concluded with a Christmas dinner on New Year’s Day with extended family from my dad’s family. It was more about the people we were with and not the presents we received. My mother sewed all our clothes so my sisters and I always had a new Christmas dress for church on Christmas morning. Instead of putting up our own lights we spent several December evenings driving through neighborhoods in our town to see the displays on the beautiful homes. It was simple, but magical. We didn’t emphasize Santa, yet we hung up a stocking from our drawer and on Christmas morning there would be an assortment of candy, fruit and nuts to claim. For me, Christmas was an event that didn’t end on December 25. And I feel blessed to have experienced it that way.
The email for this blog arrived just a couple days after I let my husband know I wanted to take decorations and lights down the weekend after January 6. It is the first time I have pushed for that since he usually likes things taken down right after New Year’s at the latest. I was expecting some disagreement from him, but amazingly he was on board. He was feeling tha same thing that I was, and that you expressed in your writing – the need to savor the important things a little longer. Thank you for helping me feel more confident in my desire and decision even if I am the only one on my block or in my neighborhood with lights still on and tree still up (with many of the name ornaments from Ever Thine Home adorning the tree). I am so looking forward to breathing in the season a little more calmly, quietly and deeply.
Thank you, Barbara for this reminder to enjoy it a little longer!
Thank you, Barbara. I’m with you in this. With all the distractions medical and political, it didn’t feel like Christmas to us until about Christmas day with the cooking and listening to music. I put up very few Christmas decorations compared to past years. We are seniors and wary of having visitors and few of our family live nearby (meaning 4 hours drive away or practice the protocols we do). But I love cooking and the music and I want to keep playing it and leave what few decorations and Christmas cards out as long as possible. I am savoring the story of Christ’s birth and how it affects our life today and throughout the year.
Thanks again for your encouragement.
Susan
Are the 3 star ornaments available to purchase that go with Will You Follow His Star book?
Hi Teresa,
You can purchase and download a file to use a Cricut and make your own stars here in our Etsy store!