I love this time of year. Always have. Love the lights on the Christmas trees. Love the carols. Love the steamy hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night. Love a fire in the fireplace and love playing games with my sisters and my brothers.

I loved all those things when I was a child and I’ve carried that love into adulthood. In the early years of my marriage, when the children were small, there was little I liked more than tucking the children into bed after an exhausting day decorating the tree, and sitting alone in the dark quiet house, watching the twinkling lights spill colors and shadows across the walls. Taking a few minutes to thank God for my family and for all the wealth he’d given me over the past year.

My husband loved celebrating, too. We always did big birthdays for the children. I’m not sure what prompted him to love birthdays so much, but for me it was a knee-jerk reaction to my parents who didn’t have a close relationship with any of us. On the one hand they gave us a great life—we traveled the world as missionaries and it was a privileged life in many ways. On the other hand my parents were Depression kids and they were so frugal with time and money that we never had a good relationship with either of them. So I wanted to give my children wild birthday parties every year to celebrate their arrival in our family.

Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday. If he were alive, he’d be 58 tomorrow, and we’d be having our annual steak and crab feast. Every year, a week before Christmas, we’d gather whatever family was in town (my husband had a huge family and almost all of them lived in a small Alaskan village, but around Christmastime several of them would be in town shopping) and I’d cook up several pounds of New York steaks, king crab legs, and baked potatoes, and serve everything up with a green salad on the side. Such a great meal.

The Christmas tree would be up and there would be beer and balloons and games galore. And a good time would be had by all. We knew how to throw a party. Good food, good friends, and good beer go a long way toward making a merry heart.

Our lives are a little different now. I’m living with my mom who will be ninety in three weeks. She isn’t into big parties. We’ll have family out for this one, but it won’t be a big bash, because Mom doesn’t like a lot of noise and activity. It wears her out.

So we’ll have a quiet Christmas and New Year’s Eve, this year. The children are grown now. They’ll be at a dinner at the church tomorrow, and I’ll stay home with Mother, because she’s too tired to go out and she’s afraid to be alone. Mom has a hard time chewing steak and she’s allergic to seafood, so there will be no steak and crab on December 18th, this year.

And that’s OK. Traditions change. The children and I have done some shopping today and we’ve picked up trees for their house and for my mother’s house. We’ll decorate in a bit. And tomorrow night, when they get home, we’ll sit by Mom’s tree and share some cocoa and eggnog and we’ll toast their father. And we’ll talk about Jesus and about where we think he’s leading us to walk in the coming year.

And after Mom is in bed, I’ll sit for a while in the quiet and watch the lights splashing kaleidoscope colors across the walls and I’ll thank God for all the wealth he’s given me over the past year. Because while traditions change, the underlying reason for the celebrations never changes. We celebrate life. We celebrate the life of Christ and we celebrate the lives of our loved ones. It doesn’t matter if we’re in Taiwan or Alaska or California or Atlanta. It doesn’t matter if we have a big house or a little mobile home or a tiny travel trailer. We’ve put up Christmas trees in big and small places. In the desert and in the swamp and at the end of a snow-covered lake. We’ve celebrated with husbands and fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and friends, and those faces have changed over the years as some have died and new ones have joined in, but always underneath it all, holding all the celebrations aloft, is a God who loves us, who loves to give us good gifts, who loves to celebrate with us. He is not stingy, and cold. He is full of mercy and abounding in love. And with a God like this, there is always reason to celebrate.

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