I am a mother who knows what I celebrate. Part 4

I celebrate Jesus Christ.  

This year for Christmas, I want our family's celebrations to teach of Christ.  Here is my vision.

The day after Thanksgiving, my children were excited to decorate for Christmas.  So we pulled up our two totes of decorations.  As we carefully consider what to put out we discuss how it reminds of Christ.  
Most of our decorations are nativities.  One for each room.  A couple that the young children can play with.  We put away the regular toy basket to make a place for the Christ Child.  Janey, 1 year, has loved wrapping up our baby boy doll and putting him in the manger.  "Jesus" is one of about 5 words in her vocabulary.
Lights on the front porch symbolize that Christ is the light of the world.

We hung stockings on the mantle, sharing the story of Saint Nicolas throwing money through the window of a poor family, and it landing in a stocking. His desire to serve and live like Jesus is worth emulating.  We also talked about the Secret Santa that our ward does for needy families and how it is a chance for us to do what St. Nicolas did.
All the lights on our fake tree were dying last year, so we got rid of it.  We have never had a real tree before, but this year we made a switch.  We actually, opted for a living Christmas tree, that we will plant in the spring.  This fit well into our new found love of growing things.  The evergreen tree symbolizes everlasting life, given to us by our Savior.  
We decorated the tree with strung popcorn, we had just read about that in Man of the Family by Ralph Moody, and our children wanted to try it.  The white represents Christ's purity, and that we can be made clean through baptism and repentance.
We have a star on top to represent the new star that signified Christ's birth.
There is a red cloth draped under the tree, to signify the blood of Christ, that he shed in our behalf.

We sing and listen to Christmas carols in honor of the choir of heavenly hosts who announced Christ's birth to the shepherds.
Our read aloud stories this month are about Christmas.  We just finished A Christmas Carol, and I found much of Christ in it, and laughed at my own narrow-mindedness of the past.

We are teaching our children that Santa Clause, and all the wonderful stories and traditions that have evolved around him, come from those who want to live like the Savior and "sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."  Luke 22:18.  In this light we are not asking for gifts, (i.e. lists for Santa) but focusing on what we can give.  If Santa visits, it is because there are good people in the world trying to live as Christ did.  We hope each of our children will become excited about doing the same.  

Our Christmas is simple this year.  I am choosing not to go to all the parties, not to spend much time at stores or pouring over catalogs and searching online.  I am thinking more of homemade gifts and service, or gifts that remind of  Jesus Christ: His gospel, His way of living, how we can become like Him, how we can prepare for Him to come again.

I really do want to celebrate the birth, life, mission, atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I  want to talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, and write of Christ that my children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins, for healing from pain, for strength beyond their own, for guidance and truth, for happiness and hope.

I am a mother who knows what I celebrate. Part 2

... Two Years Later.
In April I gave birth to a second perfect little girl. We named her Addy.  She was a happy baby that slept through the night from only a couple months old.  She reached every milestone- smiling, reaching for toys, sitting up, right on target. By mid-December she was learning to crawl.
The night of December 20, Jonathan was on travel, and I was getting us ready for a trip to Utah for Christmas.  Jonathan would be home in the afternoon and we would start driving.  I had the girls bathed, and in bed.  Suitcases packed and the house clean. The presents were all wrapped and carefully hidden in a large suitcase.  Just as I turned out all the lights - except the Christmas lights -and was going to head to bed, Addy woke up.  I picked her up, and she seemed wide awake, playful.  I was in an excited mood, and so I took her out by the tree and we played on the floor. She crawled back and forth to me.  After a while, I decided I should try to get her back to sleep, so I nursed her.  She was still awake, so I sang to her, nearly every Christmas carol I knew, by then she was still awake, but calm, so I laid her in her bed, and went to mine.  

The next morning 2 year old Kate woke me up.  I fed her breakfast and then went quietly into the girls room to get her clothes.  As I peeked in the crib, I was  --- there are no words for what I was --- my baby was dead.  Even now my body goes numb, and my mind blank, as I try to remember that moment.  

My life was eternally altered.  I was carried by the Lord through the next hours, days, weeks and months.  Eventually, the Lord set me gently back on my own two feet, and I had to really confront all of my emotions, thoughts, fears, and hopes.  I had to know what I really believed, about heaven and eternal families, yes.  But I had to know the details, what was my Addy doing as a Spirit.  What would it be like when I met her again? Would she be grown or back to her infant body? Had she died because of something I had done or was it really God's will and timing?    I began a quest for knowledge.  For Truth.  When my yearning eased, the pain of missing my baby came back - a physical aching in my arms to hold her, and in my chest - my heart.  I learned that to ease the pain I had to return to my quest for understanding.   

Through study, prayer, and personal revelation and more study my questions were answered.  I learned that I had to accept God's will.  Trust that his plan was for my happiness.  I had to forgive myself and God.  I had to get to the place where like our Savior, I could say, "Not my will, but Thine be done."  I cycled in and out of faith and hope, and despair and depression.  But always, a tiny thread at a time, my testimony was growing, and God was teaching me.

Once I learned, and really knew in my heart, that my child was in heaven, and I could have her back so long as I qualified for heaven, my quest changed.  How was I going to be sure and make it to Heaven?  I have so many weaknesses.  Make so many mistakes.  Like Nephi my spirit rejoices, but my flesh is weak.  Why do I wallow in depression when I know the truth of the Gospel?

I had to purge out all iniquity from myself and my home - that was the only way I could get my daughter back, or rather, qualify to go where she is someday.

Along my quest, I began to look at Traditions.  I found that I did have some false traditions.  Some traditions that were not serving to bring me to Christ.  I want everything to bring me to Christ.  As a mortal, I need all the help I can get.    How could I change tradition?  Its very nature and definition mean it is part of our culture, ingrained in us.  I had some more painful learning experiences ahead.

To be continued...

I am a mother who knows what I celebrate. Part 1

I celebrate the birth, life, mission, atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, and write of Christ that my children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins, for healing from pain, for strength beyond their own, for guidance and truth, for happiness and hope.

Several years ago, I started down a road of questioning all of my traditions.  There are many verses throughout the Book of Mormon that talk about the "false traditions of our fathers."  I wondered if I had any false traditions from my childhood, that I was passing on to my children.  I started looking at holidays and the traditions around those holidays.

What I learned took me on a journey and changed how I celebrate Christmas.


My mother made Christmas truly magical.  There were 10 children in our family, so our house was always bustling, and there were always children young enough to get into the magic.  It took 3 full days of hard work to clean the house and put up the decorations, right after Thanksgiving. All the regular wall decor,  and knicknacks were wrapped up into boxes and in there place we put snowmen, Santa Clauses, elves, reindeer, holly boughs, tinsel, ginger bread houses, mistletoe and of course a nativity.  The pink and blue hand towels were replaced with red and green.  There were Christmas lights, in some form or another in every room of the house.  A beautiful, real Christmas tree upstairs, and a fun one the children could decorate downstairs.   Most of December you could hear Mannheim Steamroller and Johnny Mathis' Christmas Album playing, you could smell the sweet spicyness of wasail in the crockpot, ready when you got home from school, or came in from the cold.   And I'm sure there was always a foot of snow ;-)

Every night we would read a different Christmas story.  The first one was The Last Straw.  It was just on plain typed paper, long before the beautiful picture book was published.  Then we would draw names for Pixies.  That was who we got to secretly serve that week.  And each week before Christmas we drew a new name.  I loved this tradition and always liked to make a big deal of doing something for my person every day.  I also would anxiously look on my bed for love notes, and treats from my pixie.  I remember one year there was a week when my pixie didn't come - the first day, nor the second, nor the third.  I was getting very disappointed. Being young, I think I let that disappointment show to my siblings, in hope that my pixie would get on the ball, I also tried all the harder to be an excellent pixie myself, doing a chore and leaving a love note.  Maybe an after school treat, too. 
Finally, on Friday I came home, with the faintest hope.  Before going inside to look though, I went out to the woodshed to check on a new batch of kittens, - our cats always belonged to me, and I loved to play with new kittens.  As I looked in the shed, the first thing I saw was a streak of red on one of the little white and grey fluffballs.  My first thought was "Oh no, somehow she has been hurt."  But as I lifted her out of the shed, I saw that it was a red ribbon tied around her neck. Attached was a piece of paper with "2. Look where you wash clothes."  It was in my oldest, teenage brother's handwriting. (We almost always figured out who our pixie was, but we never let on.)   This was a piece to a treasure hunt.  That was always considered the ultimate gift a pixie could do. It extended the surprise to the maximum.  I was ecstatic, as I ran into the laundry room and searched for the next clue.  I went around gathering the clues one by one, all around the house, until I was led to the microwave where a cup of hot chocolate and some cookies were waiting for me.  I enjoyed it, although I felt bad for having complained about a slacker pixie.  Really I had the best one!  And after I ate my treat, I had the fun of looking for the first clue.  The fun lasted even longer.

I remember writing Santa letters and giving them to Mom.  One year, I got to wondering, though. I remember writing a different letter to Santa, putting it in an envelope and mailing it off.  However, I never was sure if I had the right address, and therefore, I always believed my test had not really been valid.  Just because I got what I had put on the list I handed to Mom, didn't mean Santa wasn't real.  It just meant she had the right way of getting it to Santa, and I didn't.  I have often been told I am a little too trusting!  

I remember Christmas Eve driving home from our cousins house, and watching the sky, hoping I might see Santa's sleigh.  I had a very real belief.  I remember my Grandma Wood telling me a story of seeing Santa one Christmas Eve night when she was a little girl.

My mom had a little bendable rubber elf.  He moved around our house to random places on a shelf, or end table, or the bathroom counter.  He was Santa's special messenger.  He was always watching to see "who was naughty or nice."  My mom was way ahead of the now popular "Elf on the Shelf"  My mother could have written the book on how to make Christmas magical.

Now jump ahead several years to my first Christmas with my husband.  You will probably laugh at this.  But I actually, was very sad and disappointed that I had to acknowledge that Santa wasn't real, and the only presents I would get from him would have to be put under the tree myself. I believe they call this the disease of Entitlement, that my spoiled generation is so prone to.  I had been taught well enough to not act on those emotions of selfishness, but I cannot deny that I grappled with them.

The next year, I had a baby.  Oh excitement!  I could start trying to be the amazing mother, I had been shown.  I delved into the world of making Christmas magical.  We were on a college student budget mind you, and I had a husband wise enough to have taught me about interest - that we want to earn it, and not pay it, and therefore we must not spend that which we did not have.  So I had to be creative and resourceful, but Christmas would be celebrated and magical nonetheless.

Then, two years later, my life changed forever.  Something happened that made me start to question everything in my life.  I had to know what was real, what was truth.  I had to start living more completely according to that truth.

Continued tomorrow...