cb tree

The boys and I bought two Christmas trees this year. We got a blue ice Cypress (Jack’s job to cut), and a Virginia Pine, Charlie Brown Christmas tree (Will’s job to cut). There were a few better Charlie Brown specimens, but they wouldn’t let us cut them. “That’s not a proper tree, save it til next year,” they said. “I don’t think it’s a bad tree,” I said, “it’s really not a bad tree at all.”
A bunch of my students came over last night and decorated the blue ice tree. We will decorate the CB tree bit by bit next week as a hopefully intensified Advent observance. Each night, we plan to gather as a fam and read and pray and discuss and decorate the tree.
The dream here is to create within my kids, a true connection to the real meaning of Christmas. Yeah, I know, we all know what the real meaning is, huh? We’ve got clever phrases, clichés, ppt presentations, rhythmic poems, to remind us that it is not all about consumerism, playstations, getting, and gaining weight. But it’s all so cute and inadequate. Jesus is the reason for the season. Wise men still seek him.
Christmas is a warm fuzzy time. Family gathers, gifts are exchanged, we feel connected, loved, and appreciated. When we think of Christmas, we think of family, sharing, and a little baby born in a stable and laid in a manger. It all just gets wrapped up together. Elements of the Christmas season.
But what if somewhere, years down the road, December, and the coming of Christmas, rather than calling up in my kids thoughts of childhood and home and mom and dad, it really did plant in them the hope of kept promises, and faithfulness of God? What if instead of Christmas bringing me into the minds of my children, I bring to their minds Christ? What if when they thought of me, the first thing that popped into their heads was Jesus? It is my dream to be a daddy who can’t be remembered apart from Jesus. “Yeah, that’s what Dad was all about.”