Have Your Self a Merry Little Christmas

"  You can give a great and marvelous Christmas if you will remember the gifts God has given you, and as best you can, offer them to others as He would. That is the spirit of Christmas and true happiness every day."                  -President Eyring


(Quote from 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional- entire devotional can be found here.

Now that Russell and I have our own family and can start our own traditions, we really want to focus on traditions that bring us closer to Christ. We especially want our Christmas traditions to be focused on the Savior, his birth, his life, and what that means for us.

OUR TRADITIONS:

1)   As one of our new traditions, we have decided to create a gift that expresses the gifts that God has given us. (This year, we have also tried to keep a book that records how we have seen the hand of the Lord in our daily life.) We will use our book of remembrance to help us write lists for one another. I will write a list for Russ, he will write one for me, and we will write one for James. Our lists will include instances throughout the year, of God's hand in our lives and other gifts that we have seen God give our family members that may have not been recorded throughout the year. We will wrap these letters up and open them on Christmas, just like our other gifts. It will be a time of reflection and gratitude. We decided to write lists for each other instead of for ourselves, because sometimes people on the outside, who are close to us and love us, can see more than we can see at times. And it will become more of a gift than a task.

2)   We also plan on deciding upon a gift that we can give God this next year, and the following Christmas we will share with one another the gifts we have given God throughout the year. We will remember that we serve God by serving our fellow men. We hope that it is a tradition that helps our family remember why we have Christmas all year long and that it becomes something they strive to do better throughout the year so that when Christmas times comes they can be excited to share what they have given.

We hope as our children grow that these traditions will help them to become charitable sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, who see the hand of the Lord in their lives, and seek to be the hands of the Lord for others- not to gratify pride, but to express sincere love and gratitude.