it's beginning to look a lot like. . .

Christmas! This year, as every year, I am honing in on some meaningful traditions while scrapping the stressful, futile ones. Every December, I enjoy being intentional about the ways we celebrate and prepare for Christ's birth.

This year, I rang in the season with Michael W. Smith. The school was generously given several tickets to his Christmas concert at teh Dallas Symphony so I got to take 2 seventh grade young ladies. It was an absolutely lovely evening of beautiful music (some of which really brought me back to the the glory days--'90's anyone?) all of which was so God-honoring. Michael W. Smith is a great performer and his humility is refreshing and a great testament.


With the Christmas music came the desire to decorate. Unfortunately this year, I was not able to have White Christmas or Meet Me in St. Louis in the background during the decoration ceremony because my husband was studying for finals. . . alas. But I did put up a little tree in my classroom.


Also, this year was the first time that we read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol aloud in class. We haven't finished yet, but we are all enjoying it immensely. As one might suspect, the story is much darker than any of the movies, but the characters are much richer. The descriptions of Scrooge nephew and his contagious laugh are priceless. Here is one of my favorite passages so far in which Scrooge's nephew gives a retort to Scrooge's argument that Christmas should not be celebrated because it does not profit anyone:

"There are many things from which I might have derived good by, which I have not profited, I dare say," returned teh nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it come round--apart from the veneration due its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creature bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done my good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

What a beautiful sentiment about a wonderful time of year. God bless us, every one!