Category Archives: 7 Keep Christmas

My FAVORITE of all holidays (and holy days), rich with symbolism and meaning. It is not only deeply spiritual, but full of meaning I get to publicly share during the season, my best witnessing days each year!

The Broken Curse

1 Christ is All, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

I LOVE Christmas!  I am not a very exuberant person by nature, not naturally just happy and light-hearted, but give me a vision and some understanding and I come alive.  My Holy-Holiday-Calling is to remember and release a spirit of rejoicing in myself and in others as we make Jesus Christ and worshipping Him central to our raucous Christmas celebrating!

 

In our 1860s Victorian house in Nebraska, we had 9 fully-decorated trees.  I have never run out of ideas for decorating a tree, each in a unique and personal way.  Now, though, we’re down to two.  One is the collections of our lives (the tree of my sentimental heart) – the ornaments the kids made at school growing up, “baby’s first” ornaments and now treasures from the grandchildren.

But the main tree,too tall and big enough to fill too many totes with it’s ornamentations, is the tree of my faith.  The centerpiece in the branches reads: For unto you is born this day (with the print of a baby’s foot to represent Jesus’ birth), A Savior, who is Christ the Lord(a bloody hand-print reminds us that He was born to die for us)!

From the 12 foot peak flows down wide, red swaths of blood-red satin to represent His sacrifice for me.  The tree, evergreen representing everlasting life, is decorated with crosses and the angelic hosts.  It is decorated with symbols and words of all Christ came to accomplish.  It is, for me, an altar of worship.  I raise it yearly to remember and celebrate the completed work of Jesus Christ in my life.  My tree is a symbol of a broken curse.

There was another tree.  It was stripped bare of it’s branches, save one, which was affixed across the trunk up high.  And that tree is part of our celebration, even now during Christmas, and symbolizes everything that happened there bringing us eternal life.

At the foot of our Christmas tree, we lovingly exchange gifts.  Our tree is laden with sparkling ornaments, twinkling lights, and bedecked with glittering beauty.  And why? 

Because it was on a tree that God hung His greatest gift to us all and He calls us to that tree to receive the greatest of all gifts – His son, Jesus.  Galatians 3.13 reminds us that on that tree,  Jesus redeemed us from the curse.  It holds nothing on us.  We are free and redeemed from the law of sin and death and we commemorate Christmas with joy with our ornamented tree – celebrating His love toward us which flows out as we gift one another.

I’ll kneel at the tree within the next couple of days, my altar of remembrance and pray:

Father, I am kneeling at this tree thanking You that at that tree You broke the curse for me.  I am open, during this Christmas season, Lord, to receive Your deliverance for anything that haunts or taunts me.  Set me free from the things that have entangled my life.  I remember, today.  In the light from this tree, I receive Your gift from that tree…

His coming wasn’t random.  It was planned.  Remember to remember…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Make funny faces in the round glass ornaments.  Crack God up.

pictured: a close-up view of the message of our tree; some up-shots

The lights on my tree, I wish you could see…

1 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

I LOVE Christmas!  I am not a very naturally exhuberant person, not just all happy and light-hearted, but give me a vision and some understanding and I come alive.  My Holy-Holiday-Calling is to remember and release a spirit of rejoicing in myself and in others as we make Jesus Christ and worshipping Him central to our raucous Christmas celebrating!

 

Between Steph and Tristan’s house just a couple of miles east of us and my house as you travel back on Bridge, you hit Brighton’s “high point,” which isn’t very high – as we are in the valley of the great Rocky Mountains.  But there it is.  And even in this recently rural-and-still-small, but-booming town, suddenly, you reach the peak and there they are: the lights!  And especially in these long, dark nights, Christmas lights line streets and neighborhoods have come alive with twinkle.

Some one asked me recently why on earth people would still put their lights out with the world’s problems and the economy the way it is?  If they had heard Guini the other  night when we drove the kids around Brighton to see the lights, they would understand.  For she and Gavin and Hunter oohed and awed over every single light.  But Guini, each time she spotted a lit up star (and especially the really large one atop the 100-foot tree at the City Building, would scream, a la Buddy in the movie “Elf,” “CHRISTMAS!  CHRISTMAS!  Star!!”

Yes, there are hosts of people all over Brighton and Denver and Colorado, all over our nation and the world who are celebrating, whether they even yet understand it or not, that the Light has come and the darkness can never be the same!

Isaiah 9.2 “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death – a light has dawned!”

John 8.12 “Jesus said, ‘I am the Light of the world.  Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the Light of Life.”‘

I love the lights of Christmas!  And every twinkling light, every candle we light during this season is piercing a darkness that would otherwise be there and is representing that Jesus is the Light of the world!

Living in great light…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  More candles. 

pictured: part of Dave’s Bedford Falls town

The Stuff of Christmas – Right or Wrong???

1 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think,

I LOVE Christmas!  I am not a very exuberant person by nature, not naturally happy and light-hearted, but give me a vision and some understanding and I come alive.  My Holy-Holiday-Calling is to remember and release a spirit of rejoicing in myself and in others as we make Jesus Christ and worshipping Him central to our raucous Christmas celebrating!

There are two reasons it is important to know and understand the symbols (the stuff) of Christmas: 

  1. Because they are beautiful, visual touch points for teaching our children about our faith in Jesus Christ.  Every year as we decorate with bows, and holly and stars and Nativity sets, we explain it, (here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept) and we are sowing spiritual seeds of faith.  Christmas then becomes the accumulation of learning as year follows year and season follows season.  When they are grown, the Truth is there – either for them to joyfully impart to their own children, or no matter how far thy may seem to wander from the Lord – as an inescapable testimony, the Truth they will see all around every Christmas season.
  2. And because, through the symbols of the season, we can impact others with the truth.  For when we have a correct understanding, we’re gently able to impart spiritual truth to others.  For many of our co-workers and neighbors are celebrating Christmas not even aware of the depth of what they do!  Even so – they are acknowledging a Savior!  Christmas=Christ’s mass=the worship of Jesus Christ.  So we need understanding so we’re not sheepish about what Christmas has become.  We should be the most joyous celebrants of all and welcome and use every symbol and facet of the season to give a reason for our hope and to set apart Christ as Lord – the Worthy One.

I believe.

I believe in the symbols!  In each one there is lodged a deep and spiritual truth.  Religious tradition doesn’t impose these truths.  The truth exist and the symbols (the lights, the decorations, the songs, the trees and wreaths) have become the way we express Christianity through our decorating and celebrating and rich traditions!  The things we do when we celebrate bring us understanding.

God loves a good party.

God loves celebrations!  He, in fact, set forth many celebrations in the Bible.  The one in Exodus 12 for the First Passover was His invitation as a way to teach the children.  Joshua 4 tells of celebrations also meant to teach the children of the faithfulness of God.  The gathering in Ezra says the celebrating was so loud (over several days) that is was heard far away.

So, I think it is OK with God to celebrate Christmas!  I don’t think God would be displeased with us if we just listened to Bing Crosby sing about Rudolph and we made cookies and put lights on our house – just for a break, a nice celebration.  But it is so much more dynamic than that when we understand and teach and share the symbols because of the rich and powerful spiritual meanings.

I plan to keep on exposing my children and their children and the people around me to the raw reality of my unhampered happiness.  I plan to sing “Silent Night” when I stand in a long line at the bank.  I plan to worship Jesus at the foot of my Christmas tree, an altar of peace and prayer in this harried season.  I plan to say to every clerk and neighbor and service person I meet: Merry Christmas!  Because when I do, whether they consciously understand the significance in the declaration, I have just prophesied into the atmosphere around me: Merry Christmas!  Happy worship of the Christ!  Jesus Christ, we worship You!  And I pray that pierces their heart in the deep places in some way.

Yes, this is our season as Christ-followers.  Because it is His and we can openly declare His glory in these few short days like at no other time of the year.

Happily hallowing the Name above all Names even and especially at Christmastime…Jeanie

1 Peter 3.15  “But in your hearts set apart Christ as lord.  Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope you have.”

Sneak Peek

2 Mi Familia, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

   

I kiddingly (kind of intending the pun) asked my friend, the goat-farming-guru, if I could borrow a baby goat for my annual grandkids-Nativity picture.  He said, “Sure.  Would you like some other animals?”  Next thing I knew, I had, at my disposal, several hundred choice farm animals, should I desire.

  

A short-lived break in the frigid weather provided a very sunny morning (the kids were majorly layer-dressed under these costumes and fared quite well, thank-you very much).  We gathered at the Ritchie farm in Brighton just under a barn awning and snapped a few shots.  The animals were so much fun.  Naturally, we never got a shot with all of the kids looking at the same thing or at the camera because they were enoying the goats and cats and sheep and the donkey just like we adults were!  But what a fun fun fun day!

   

Most embarrassing moment: 

Farmer Wrex handed me the rope which held a donkey on one end and 2 wiley billy goats on the other (I am giving them these labels to make it sound better for me).  Now, they had just been standing there, tied together, but behaving…until he handed me the rope.  “Hold this,” he tells me.  I am standing there looking all “city girl” my kids said.  The second Wrex walked away, the donkey screeched and jerked his head and the 2 goats decided to bolt.  Basically the three animals tried to put me in a strangle-hold.  My whole family, except for my wonderful son, who will now be willed all my earthly goods when I die, were just laughing their heads off, watching me push back on the rope with all my might (with my weany-arms) trying to keep the goats from dragging me to a certain snow-burn death, my shoes just sliding straight backwards to the sound of raucous hee-hawing (my family AND the donkey!).  Rocky saved me.  Still, I am sure I was born to farm.  I would just need different shoes.

Dress-up, anyone?

Yes, I do plan to subject the grandkiddos to this every single year, because it just stinking makes me smile! 

Tonight, I finally get to go through and decide what to do for our Christmas cards (nothing like waiting until that last second, huh?).  And the more chaotic the shot, the more I smile!

What could be more merry and bright than this?…Jeanie

Thumbnails, click for larger image.  Pictured: Guini as Mary, Gemma as an angel, Hunter as a shepherd and Gavin as Joseph.  Averi as an angel, Averi’s daddy goofing around, Hunter corraling his baby goat.  The animals arriving for the photo shoot, and a woolly lamb.

Thanks Wrex and Stefane!!!

Holiday Fare – Top Ten Tips

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

 

This came in emails from several friends last week and I must wholeheartedly concur with this very good advice for eating and diet during the holidays.  I was told a member-in-good-standing with Weight Watchers wrote it (?).  I truly suscribe to this thinking!  Here are the top ten tips to get you through the holiday buffet:

 
10.  Avoid carrot sticks.  Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet
table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit.  In fact, if you see carrots,
leave immediately.  Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls. 
 
9.  Drink as much eggnog as you can.  And quickly.  It’s rare.  You
cannot find it any other time of year but now.  So drink up!  Who cares
that it has 10,000 calories in every sip?  It’s not as if you’re going to
turn into an eggnog-a-holic or something.  It’s a treat.  Enjoy it.
Have one for me.  Have two.  It’s later than you think.  It’s Christmas! 
 
8.  If something comes with gravy, use it.  That’s the whole point of
gravy.  Gravy does not stand alone.  Pour it on.  Make a volcano out of
your mashed potatoes.  Fill it with gravy.  Eat the volcano.  Repeat. 
 
7.  As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or
whole milk.  If it’s skim, pass.  Why bother?  It’s like buying a sports
car with an automatic transmission. 
 
6.  Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control
your eating.  The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat
other people’s food for free.  Lots of it.  Hello? 
 
5.  Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New
Year’s.  You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do.
This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the
buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of
eggnog. 
 
4.  If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like
frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position
yourself near them and don’t budge.  Have as many as you can before
becoming the center of attention.  They’re like a beautiful pair of
shoes.  If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again. 
 
3.  Same for pies.  Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat.  Have a slice of each.  Or if
you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin.  Always have
three.  When else do you get to have more than one dessert?  Labor Day? 
 
2.  Did someone mention fruitcake?  Granted, it’s loaded with the
mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost.
I mean, have some standards. 
  
And the #1 and final tip:  If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party
or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention.  Re-read
tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.
Remember this motto to live by: 
 
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand,
champagne in the other, body thoroughly used up,
totally worn out and screaming
“WOO HOO what a ride!”

author unknown

‘Nuff said.

images: google!

White-Silent-Night-Holy-Night-O-Little-Town Christmas

1 Christ is All, 7 Keep Christmas, , ,

The Garage at church is dark and very hip and cool.  So, the Christmas decorations won’t stand out if you do the usual woodsy-greens.

 

Enter my Silent-Night-Holy-Night-O-Little-Town-of-Bethlehem-all-in-white theme.  It came to me 2 years ago during church one Sunday morning – I saw silhouettes and sparkly huge cut-outs encasing the room.  Scott gave me the go-ahead this year.  He is so trusting.

Add in my friend, Pearl, who is not only very creative and artistic, but has always wanted to create “Bethlehem.”  Three years ago, she created Narnia at the church we attended then and it was the most magical thing I have ever seen for church decor!  She brought her love for “sculpting” with foam, her attention to detail, her heat gun, her very talented husband, Bryan, along with great ideas for back-lighting the town and we were off to the races.  Pearl did a lot of the detail work and “smaller” projects at home, then we worked at the church together some for 3 days.

  

  

There is a heavenly host of angels suspended from the ceiling over the stage, which is draped with light curtains.  Genius lighting tech, Alfonso Lopez added some amazing effects the other night to cause shadows to double our angelic group and it was beautiful!  He also spot-lighted the Star of Bethlehem (which Pearl carved and fit together from 2 star shapes of 2″ thick foam) to a brilliance I did not know you actually could achieve from white and silver glitter and a few hundred sequins.

Up high, over the entry doors, are the “Wise guys,” heading directly, on their noble camels, toward the star, which will lead them straight to the babe.

The stage is garlanded in crystally, poofy fabric wrapped around hundreds of lights.  Just below the garland are a small group of lambs straining to get a glimpse of the baby Jesus.

 

  

Bethlehem itself lines one wall leading to the stage, while the shepherds in the fields are overcome by the brightness of the host of angels on another.

But center stage?  The Nativity is illuminated on the main center screen – for the whole thing leads directly to Jesus.  His birth.  His coming.  Him.

As near as I can tell, the whole project took about 85 or 86 man hours (you can’t just cut the foam at your own speed, you know).  We went through a few pounds of glitter, quite a few sheets of 4 x 8 foam, yards and yards of fabric, many strings of lights, and a lot of help from our husbands!

The best part was my time with Pearl and getting to see the whole thing finally finished on Thursday night (even though we still had ideas and materials-you have to stop sometime) and “coming to life” while the worship team practiced for Sunday. 

On Sunday morning, just in time for the “unveiling,” we got a beautiful, wet, full winter snow outside.  Just like inside, it was white.  It seemed holy.  The four lambs on the stage right in front of the Nativity testified that, through Jesus: 

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”  (Is. 1.18 NIV) 

So this is what I have been up to…Jeanie

Big-time thanks to: Pearl and Bryan Younger, daughter Tara, daughter Steph and my little Guini-muggins, Laura Frye, Mike-the-maintenance-big-wig, Rocky, Alfonso, my longsuffering husband, Dave (he rolls with my flow),  and daughter Stormie

PICTURED:  top row ~ Stormie did the graphic so the big screen would be part of the whole design, a angel sampling;  second & third rows ~ (thumbnails, click to enlarge) more angels, a Bethlehem wall, wise men on camels (nearly 6 feet tall!) up over the entry way, one sparkly donkey, hard to photograph a spinning star!  It was 40-some inches “tall”;  final four shots ~ a vista (I may have to finish the fabric and lighting we had planned, hmmm…), shepherds in the field wall, Rocky leading, some of the band amongst the sheep.

Christmas Award

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

 

Audrey has bequeathed upon me the Christmas Spirit Award.  I am suppose to tell 5 things I love about Christmas and bestow the award upon 5 other people for them to do the same.

Five Things I Love About Christmas:

1.  The Christ of Christmas.  I am a Jesus follower, lover and worshiper.  Everything, and I mean everything is because of Him, about Him, to honor Him.  The reason I live is to worship You, Lord…

2.  Dave’s joy.  Dave IS Mr. Christmas.  Dave loves everything about it.  He comes alive in the shortest days and longest nights of the year and makes my life merry and bright.

3.  The five kids God gave me so I would understand the sheer JOY of giving them what they need to live (and get why He loves it so, too) and watching them, as they marry and have children, experience the same!

4.  The five grandkids, of course.  I did not know I could or would become one of those grandmas, but I guess I am.  And I LOVE doing Christmasy things with these amazing, wonderful, sweet, funny, charming, talented, and loving children.  They are beyond words for me, really.  They renew my Christmas spirit regularly!

5.  The symbols, the lights, the music and sounds, the smells, the meanings, the good wishes, the cookies, the friends, the laughter, the gifts I get to give, the Gift God gave to me, I love it all!  All this and more…

Five People Who Also Get the Christmas Spirit Award

Because it is Christmas, I am keeping this a secret and not giving my 5-selected-blogger-friends the award – so that they may get their shopping and baking and all else Christmas done. :)  Really, I am not just trying to keep the award for myself!…

May YOUR days be merry and bright…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  All this focus on Chrismas…am I forgetting other stuff???  Oh well, who cares? :)

Half Baked

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

It was Christmas baking day!  It was a mad flurry of flour and sugar, creamery butter and sprinkles. 

  

We had sent 63+ e-mails back and forth over the past two weeks (this may or may not be an exaggeration) in anticipation of Baking Day.  This is why I now know that approximately half of our concoctions are actually not baked at all.  It is amazing how many of the things we like are dipped in melted chocolate or blended and rolled into balls or cooked on a stove top before adding a certain snap, crackle and pop ingredient to a non-bake cookie.

Better-than-Girl-Scout “Thin-mints”/chocolate-dipped pretzels/peanut-butter balls/caramel cookies (can you possibly go wrong with a cookie that encases a Rolo and is topped with bits of Heath Bar??)/caramel popcorn balls/cookies-on-sticks/butter cookies/raspberry ribbons/decorated sugar cookies/peanut brittle (we always and ever have to throw the first unsuccessful batch out-what is up with that??)/Strawberries (which actually aren’t at all – not even in flavor)/royal icing/butter-cream icing/peanut blossoms-with-kisses-instead/almond bark/chocolate chips of every persuasion/peppermint/vanilla/almond/mini-cheesecakes/brownie assortments – all these and more threaten to throw us all into sugar shock.

  

Sadly, it was a balmy 108-degrees outside Saturday (another possible exaggeration), so we were shedding layers and had the doors and windows opened wide, drinking ice water like the dog days of summer.

  

In the end, even though my grandfather was a baker extraordinaire and owned a bakery for many years, and even though my other grandpa’s last name was “Baker,”  I don’t think I am one and I believe only 1 1/2 of my girls actually are bakers.  Maybe next year, we’ll let the 1 1/2 of them have a pre-baking day to really bake and we’ll have a non-baking Baking Day to eat their stuff and roll our tidbits in chocolate and that will be better.

  

Ended the day with the guys and kiddos joining us for the biggest pot of chicken and dumplings I have ever made in my life, because you know, we needed more flour and eggs. ;>[

Cup of coffee and some cookies, anyone?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Get more Rubbermaid-pronto!

PICTURED (all thumbnails, click to enlarge): Top row ~ raspberry ribbons and other cookies; second row ~ some of the cookies in front of the homemade ornanament “memory” tree, the kids and Grandpa decorating cookies; third row ~ Gemma, Averi and Hunter with the biggest Santa in my collection; fourth row ~ Gav with Santa, niece, Elise with Averi and Stormie konks out after a long day of baking and fun.

Baby, it’s cold outside

5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

Woke up to 14-degrees below zero today, but it may make it all the way up to the 11-degrees promised because of the sunshine.

Meanwhile, some one stole my husband’s beloved and treasured snow shovel (it is like 12 years old, but it was a goodie!) and he is in mourning.  Left on our porch, the thief knew a good thing when he saw it!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr…Jeanie