Maybe Christmas Doesn’t Come From a Store

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more!”

I’ve been seeing photos of some pretty glamorous trees and Christmas decorating schemes on Facebook for the past few weeks. You, too? And while I might have a bit of envy of some of the wide-open spaces, the two-story entryways with plenty of room for 12 or 14 foot tall trees, when I decorated our tree last night, I decided (once again) I wouldn’t trade my life for all the space and budget “some people” seem to have. The only reason there’s space beside our tree in the photo is because I pulled out both recliners to decorate. In reality, it’s pretty cozy.

Around here, Christmas is rather homespun. We have a real tree that we find in the wild and cut down ourselves. OF COURSE! We don’t have tinsel or tinsel garlands–quit that years ago when the cat-in-resident became too interested. We don’t have any color-coordinated glass balls. We don’t have a color-scheme. Nearly every decoration is handmade, either by me, by one of my kids (some from their preschool days), by another family member or friend, or by an artisan at a craft fair or the like.

Angel ornaments are made of everything from crepe paper to lace, carved wood, beads, macaroni, bells, silk roses, and pretty much anything else someone thought of once. There are crocheted snowflakes from my mother-in-law, as well as some ornaments she cross-stitched.

There are four hand-carved Chilean Bellflowers (my son-in-law is from Chile), two wire-wrapped-wool llamas from Bolivia (a sister), some “billum” (woven bark bags) from Papua New Guinea (another sister), and a metal tree-and-moose ornament from our Alaskan cruise in 2010.

There are reindeer made out of clothespins by my preschool-age nephews in 1995, and tiny gift-wrapped boxes that hung on Jim’s and my very first Christmas tree–no money for ornaments! There’s the origami swan my son made when he was 13–the year he broke his leg a couple of weeks before Christmas and made origami irises for both grandmothers and little jumping frogs for all his little cousins.

Our Christmas tree is made up of memories. Memories of our life together as a family, memories of the way God has touched our lives. What does Christmas really mean? Here it is through the eyes of a six-year-old.

No, our Christmas doesn’t come from a store. To us, it means a little bit more.