Christmas Traditions

My favorite Christmas tradition at my Dad's parents' house involved the manger scene.  Every year, my grandparents put up a manger scene.  Grandma would take the manger scene all apart and assign everyone a piece.  Then grandma would read the Christmas Story and when each of our pieces was named... be that piece Mary, Joseph, donkey, lamb, Shepherd, or the always wanted baby Jesus... we would go up to the manger and place our figures inside.  My Mom made sure we had a manger scene for our first Christmas.  The manger scene is the Christmas decoration that I enjoy the most.  I nearly kept our manger scene up all year last year.

The lights and ornaments on the tree are pretty.  I do enjoy turning down the lights and just enjoying the glow of the Christmas Tree.  We had a tradition when I was growing up of putting up our tree every Thanksgiving.  I am glad I started the tradition of giving my children a new ornament each year, because putting up the ornaments and remembering who gave them to us, or when we made them, or Mom and  Dad made them, was the most fun thing for me in helping set our family tree as a child.

I like taking a family picture each year.  I like seeing how everyone has grown and seeing how clothes and hair change over the years.  Here's our picture from after church this morning: 

Merry Christmas!  

Happy Birthday to Jesus (or Yeshua-"The Lord is our salvation")!