The Spirit of Christmas

I know it's a little late, but Merry Christmas!!! I just had to post my little Christmas lesson.

This year Christmas has been a little bit different for my family. My brother, Devin, is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He started out in Bolivia but a few months ago things got really dangerous there and he was moved to Peru. I am grateful for modern technology that allows me to e-mail him because otherwise we'd have to rely on snail mail...and I now understand that term more fully than I EVER did before. Anyway...my brother wasn't able to join us this Christmas, so it was the first Christmas that we haven't had everyone together. On top of that, my grandparents are getting older and becoming more dependent. Especially my grandfather. It's changed the way we do a lot of things in our family.

This Christmas we made a plan to try to help our grandparents celebrate the holidays. My dad knew that my grandparents didn't really have any plans and didn't even have presents for each other. A few days before Christmas, we went to the store and purchased some gifts to put under our grandparents' tree. We also made them stockings and stuffed them with the same things they put in their childrens' stockings: an orange, a banana, and a bunch of peanuts.

Christmas Eve my family always reads the Christmas story and sing songs that correlate with the story. It's a very beautiful and touching time for us, and a great reminder of what Christmas is all about. This year, we took this special part of our family tradition to my grandparents' house, so that they could share in the spirit. My uncle had also brought his family to visit my grandparents, so we were all able to join our voices together.

I can't pin down the most beautiful moment, so I'll share two. One would be listening to my grandfather join in as we sang the last song: Silent Night. With his declining health, my grandfather hasn't been as alert and "with it". So to hear him sing with us was very special. The other wonderful thing was seeing the tears in my grandmother's eyes as she thanked us for the evening.

After my grandparents were in bed, my family snuck back into the house to play Santa Claus. We put the stockings over the fireplace and the presents under the tree. I wish I could have seen my grandmother's face when she saw all those things in the morning!

Christmas morning we went to my grandparents' house and watched them open all the presents that "Santa" left. It was cute because after every present my grandmother would say, "Well, that was just wonderful, thank you so much." She was always surprised to see my brother handing her another gift. I don't know about my siblings, but while watching my grandparents open their gifts, I felt that little light bulb go off in my head. I was reminded that gifts don't have to be big or expensive to mean a lot. My family hadn't spent a lot on the multitude of tiny gifts we had placed under our grandparents' tree. It wasn't so much even that we'd given them a whole bunch of gifts. What really mattered, and what the spirit of Christmas is really about, is the giving. Not what we give, but how we give it, and why.

This Christmas it was so nice to focus less on myself and more on others. It was great to see how we were able to shower our grandparents with love and remind them that they matter. It was also great to talk to my brother on the phone and feel like our family was together...even miles and miles apart. I have so much to be grateful for this Christmas! I hope that everyone else was able to witness the Christmas spirit in all its beauty and splendor. And I am so grateful for the greatest gift of all: the love of a Father who gave His son so that we could all live again.