And so this is Christmas...

And so this is Christmas.

Christmas, as an adult I'm discovering, is marked with changes.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I didn't attend church with my family (when there was an option to do so) on Christmas Eve. I attended a separate service, earlier in the afternoon, by myself, and it was a good thing. I suppose I could have also attended the evening service at the church I grew up in, the church which all of my immediate (and most of my extended) family still attends. But I didn't. I don't know why I didn't. Maybe it was a way of simply being myself. Maybe it was a little bit of petty rebellion against expectations of family and the people dad pastors. Maybe a little bit of resentment at something I always hated as a child - Christmas Eve was one of the few times in the year when just my siblings and parents and I were deliberately together, when we set aside everything else and enjoyed each others company, and I always hated the years when the church declared a need for a Christmas Eve service, because it cut into family time on a night filled with my favorite traditions. I suppose it was some combination of exerting self-identity, rebellion and resentment that kept me home.

And when I came home, I quietly and prayerfully lit the advent wreath on my dresser. The one I've lit through this whole season. And I celebrated in my own quiet way the coming of the light.

For the first time in my life, we didn't spend Christmas Eve revisiting the story of our family either. Each of the three of us siblings have an ornament that marks a significant event from each year in our life. A large portion of these ornaments are hand-carved by dad. On Christmas Eve the boxes of those ornaments would come out, and Dad would tell the story of our family as each of us hung them on the tree one by one. 20 plus years of love and laughter and struggles were rehashed as we added to the more "traditional" decorations already on the tree. Last year my parents informed us that it was the last year we were going to hang ornaments and tell the story. They stopped providing the ornament for us when we turned 21, so for several years I'd already been purchasing my own, but I loved the story telling, and the laughter.

Earlier this month I picked up my box of ornaments from my parent's house. It was a hard box to open this year, filled with so many memories and milestones. I eventually opened it in the company of one of my roommates, telling my own version of the story as I hung 26 years of ornament memories on the tree in our living room. But I missed hanging them together on my parents tree last night.

(And, last night mom hinted that next year, she was thinking of scrapping the our traditional feast of hor'deourves for a more traditional dinner. My only response was "Why???")

And so, this morning I'm laying here curled up in bed. Soon I'll get up and wrap the last few presents. I'll read a little from scripture, and send an email or two to those friends who are really family, and are far away this Christmas.

Eventually I'll head for my parents house in time for the traditional hashbrown breakfast that dad makes. (You really haven't lived until you've eaten my dad's hashbrowns - an all in one dish with sausage and cheese and veggies and potatoes and spices and just general goodness). This year, we're eating breakfast before presents. That's unusual, though it was the source of much laughing debate when my parents announced this intention to us last night. One of my brothers insisted that this is the way we've always done it. (He's wrong, by the way.) Essentially, now that we're adults, and want to stay in bed past 7am on Christmas, if we ate breakfast after presents, it became lunch. Since the extended family dinner is at 4:30, that was two large meals close together. So we'll eat breakfast first - it makes sense after all, and we're no longer the little children whose patience for presents could not have been contained through a meal.

Christmas, as an adult, I think, is what you make of it. There's not the chaotic wonder and impatience and delight at presents that there was as a child. Traditions change. The family expands or contracts depending on the year. This year I find myself longing not so much for the family of my blood (though I'll love spending time with them) but the family of my heart (spread out across the country and much missed and loved). I'm hoping to speak with some of them in the next few days as well.

And so this is Christmas: That Jesus Christ, took on flesh and lived among us. That he lived and suffered and died and was resurrected. That he offers us the chance to choose life, a life more abundantly lived.

Merry Christmas everyone! May the peace and light of Christ fill your lives this day and in the coming year.