What I have learned this Christmas Season

This is the first year in many years that I have not been stressed about the Christmas holiday. Truly. Yes I still have things to do and later today we need to run out and buy a couple more gifts, but I am not stressed. Normally by this time I am ranting and raving and stressing so much on what I have not completed. This year is different. I have been reflecting on our Christmas preparations and have learned the following:

It does not matter if the house is not perfectly decorated~some would say that if you haven't decorated by now you should forget it. Today we put up our small FIAR tree just before our company arrived. I put the lights on gave the boys the decorations and let them go to town. They had an awesome time and the tree looks beautiful.

It does not matter if my Christmas cards do not all arrive before Christmas! I had my Christmas cards ready on Sat and ran out of stamps. I still have a few cards that need a letter in them. They will not arrive before Christmas. So what? It just extends the holiday a little, I personally love getting cards between Christmas and New Year's.

It does not matter that I did not bake 12 different kinds of cookies, pumpkin bread and candies. (in the past I have done this and more to the point of exhaustion) As of this posting I have only baked one batch of pumpkin bread and made one batch of candy. That's it. I need to bake and will do that tomorrow and no there will not be 12 different kinds of cookies~There may not be any cookies, maybe only bread and candies. I know whatever I bake will be lovingly accepted.

It does not matter that I did not get all the hand made items I wanted to for the boys. There are other holidays and special times ahead.

It does not matter that when I do bake that I will not get my baked goods delivered to our library before Christmas. We will deliver them between Christmas and New Year's.

It does not matter if my house is perfectly spotless. The dust really does not show up too well in the beautiful Christmas tree lights.

It does not matter that I still have a few ornaments to put on the tree. I'm putting them on tomorrow.

It does not matter that I did not get every blog post done I wanted and planned on doing. It really doesn't. I can blog anytime about anything I want. It's my blog!

What does matter.........

spending time with my husband and boys, doing our advent devotions and advent calendar and Jesse tree~the boys ask every day to do these things, almost more than the ask for gifts!

watching a movie together as a family, cuddling on the couch and enjoying time together~they are only little once. We need to make these memories now.

reading all those Christmas books together

spending the day together playing at the museum all day, on a dreary rainy day. Daddy took the day off. We played all day, we went out to eat and visited the Korean market.

enjoying all the beautiful Christmas cards...I hope we get some after Christmas!

listening to the beautiful Christmas music

planning a simple stress free Christmas dinner for the four of us before we head out to church on Christmas Eve

putting our focus on Christ and less on what we have to do or are expected to do because it is Christmas.

I think this year we have managed to do that more than any other year. Yes there are still things I wish I had planned differently and things I wished I had thought to do, but there is always next year. In spite of it all, I have found Christ amongst the chaos I tend to create in my life.

I pray you are letting go of the perfection we seem to think we need to create to focus on the real meaning of why we celebrate Christmas. Jesus' birth....