The magic of Christmas

The other night I said to Scott, “Only

two and a half weeks ‘till Christmas.”

“What!?” he replied, shocked.

It’s a peculiar phenomenon how

Christmas “sneaks up” on us every year. It’s the same exact month

and day every single year. We have 365 days to prepare for it and

yet, somehow, we are surprised how quickly it comes around.

All year long I picture Christmas a

certain way — magical. And some things always are just that. But

other things ... well, not quite.

A few years back, when we only had two

children, Scott and I decided to go all out for Jessica (who was 7)

because Isaac was just a baby. We spent our whole budget pretty

much just on her and found just the perfect things. We also decided

to re-do her bedroom while she was asleep. We had the perfect plan:

Wait until she fell asleep, carry her into our room, paint her

room, while the paint dried hang the new curtains I had made and

put on the new bedding which I had also made, and then hang the

cute little wallpaper border. Then we would carefully put her back

in her bed and let her wake up to a magically transformed bedroom.

We stayed up until 2 a.m. and went to bed utterly exhausted.

A few hours later she came in our room

and shook us awake. “It’s Christmas! Can we open presents now?”

We were delirious and mumbled for her

to go back to bed. She obeyed but just a short time later came back

in with the same question. We gave her the same answer. As she

walked out she said, “Oh, and someone painted my whole room.” We

were too tired to reply.

We fell back to sleep and a short time

later she tried one more time to get us to get up. Somehow in my

sleep I was able to pick up some noise coming from the living room.

The noise continued for a little while and I drifted in and out of

sleep. Suddenly I sat bolt upright in bed and shook Scott

awake.

“Oh no, oh my gosh! Hun, I hear paper

ripping!” We were both suddenly wide awake and ran to the Christmas

tree just in time to see Jessica turn to the very last un-opened

gift. Everything else was opened and neatly lined up on the

fire-place hearth. We both stood in silence as Jessica turned to us

and calmly said, “Hi, Mom and Dad.”

After I finished crying, we sat down

with her, watched her open the one gift left and then asked her

what she thought when she opened each of her presents. We laughed

about it later. Much, much later. We also learned a very valuable

lesson: Never, never, go to bed late on Christmas Eve.

We had another brilliant idea several

Christmases ago. With six little girls we decided the perfect gift

was a dollhouse. So I got on-line and found the absolutely most

gorgeous dollhouse. Well, it wasn’t exactly a dollhouse, it was a

kit. Even more perfect we thought! This way we can put it together

and it will be a labor of love too. Something we would keep forever

and our grandchildren would play with it.

The kit arrived and Scott and I

excitedly opened it. The instructions alone were mind-boggling. We

quickly realized it would take a general contractor to construct

this thing. There were about 10 million pieces. And the glue wasn’t

even included. We brainstormed and decided to hit my dad up. “He’ll

do it” we thought. This was just his sort of project. He looked it

over and called with the bad news: “No way.” We told him to stash

it under his bed for us. f anyone wants a dollhouse ... email me.

But don’t forget it’s a KIT.

One of our biggest Christmas challenges

every year is the tree. For some reason this is not our forte. One

year Scott and I were awakened in the middle of the night by a loud

crashing sound in the living room. I got up to explore and came

back and told Scott, “The tree hit the fan.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it fell over and hit the ceiling

fan.”

The next year we made sure that the

tree was secured really well in the tree stand and it worked for a

day or two longer before that tree fell over too. The next year we

bought a new stand.

When we moved into our current home, we

were excited to get a really tall tree because our ceilings in the

living room were high. Scott found the perfect tree which was too

tall to bring home ourselves and we had to have it delivered. The

next day, on Dec. , I delivered our eighth child, Jonathan. When I

came home, we put effort into decorating the tree, but it was just

so darn tall. We never did make it to the top. We decorated as far

as we could reach and called it good. We had just had a new baby

after all, so, oh well.

The next year we set our sights a

little lower, or shorter, and cut one from the woods near our

house. It looked great in the woods. Once it was up in our living

room the kids said it looked “naked.” It was pathetic. It looked

like a bunch of sticks with light wires wound around them. The few

limbs it had were weak and wouldn’t hold any ornaments. I told my

friend in Arizona about it and she said “Oh it can’t be that bad.”

I texted a picture of it to her and she texted back, “Wow. It

out-uglies Charlie Brown’s tree.”

The next year we were going to get it

right. I was finally going to get my dream tree. Perfection was the

goal. We went to our favorite place to get a tree — the gas station

next to IGA, picked out the most beautiful one they had and took it

home. It was spectacular. We decorated it all the way up to the

top. The branches were full and lush and held all our ornaments

perfectly. Friends of ours came over, admired it and asked, “Is it

real?” What’s the point of having a real tree if it looks fake?

Maybe we should just put ourselves out of our tree misery and get a

fake tree that looks real.

Christmas takes a lot of work. But the

real magic of Christmas comes when you remember what is being

celebrated in the first place — the birth of a tiny little baby boy

who came to save you and me.