Remembering with Thanksgiving
Until I was thirty years of age, Christmas was spent with my parents and siblings, my grandparents, and five aunts and uncles and many cousins. We talked loudly and late and started again early in the morning. We played games, sang (often singing through the main selections of the Messiah), and talked.
But Christmas Day took special meaning. We had a Christmas program of our own before we opened presents. Some things were constant: We sang carols; Aunt Joy read The Bird’s Christmas Carol; Aunt Libby and Uncle Walt sang Silver Bells; Aunt Jessie read Christmas on the Frontier; the younger children often sang special carols or played a Christmas carol on whatever instrument they were learning; when I was in college as a speech major, I often gave a Christmas reading. All of us together quoted Luke 2, with the younger ones learning a little bit more every year. The program often seemed much too long.
The end of the program never varied, and that is the part of the tradition that I miss the most. Granddad would ask what God had taught us during the year, what we were most grateful for. The youngest might simply say they were glad they got to come to Grandma and Grandpa’s. But many times we wound up weeping as we heard what God was doing. Often we praised, sometimes with weeping then too.
The years have slipped away. There is no big gathering anymore. But for just myself, I want to go back to remembering and thanking God for this past year.
May your Christmas memories be sweet!
~~Faith Himes Lamb
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