Christmas season is a time that many look forward to. I love the lights and decorations, the music and movies and, of course, the gifts. Like most people, our family has several traditions that are associated with Christmas. It is always fun to ask the kids what they look forward to during this season. It sometimes surprises me the things they come up with. The things that are important to them that I didn’t realize.
Traditions are great things to keep ties with our past. Things that we enjoyed that we want our kids to enjoy. They are things that make my family who we are. This year, like many of you, we have not been able to do many of our usual traditions for one reason or another. With Christmas just a couple days away, there are many Christmas traditions for our family that just don’t look like they will happen this year, at least not before Christmas. Some of them we can delay until after Christmas, but some we will just miss.
Maybe it is time to start some new traditions? Sometimes we work so hard to hang onto the past that it limits our ability to move forward and make things better. Just because we have always done this doesn’t mean we need to keep doing it. That is true, not just with Christmas traditions, but in every part of our life, in our jobs, and in our churches. Traditions are valuable and remind us where we came from. But if we focus too much of our physical and emotional energy on the traditions of the past, it doesn’t leave us much energy to build a better future.
“I like things just the way they are.” Me too, for the most part. But, despite our best efforts to keep them that way, things never stay “just the way they are.” So, instead of working hard to stop change, maybe we can work hard to create change. 2020 has been a big year of change for everyone. I hear a lot of people say “I’m ready to get back to the way it was before all of this.” Well… it isn’t going to, so it’s time to put the past behind, set some goals for the new year, and move on.
This Christmas is going to be a little different. It isn’t going to be what I wanted it to be. That doesn’t mean it is bad, just different. Maybe it’s time for some changes anyway.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.
Share in the comments some of your favorite Christmas traditions and maybe some things that will be different this year.
Forget the former things;
Isaiah 43:18-19
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:
