Thanks also, M&M for the link to Cheryl’s piece, which I also really liked. It made me think that, while we tend to sometimes moralize that Christmas should be *all* spiritual, calm, and contemplative, Jesus himself was born amidst circumstances of “hullabaloo,” in the sense of negotiating the obstacles of the material world — travel, and finding a place for him to be born. That’s a partly flawed comparison in that a lot of our hullabaloo involves luxury rather than necessity, but it somewhat works if you think in terms of the travel, work, and mundane details involved to make a nice holiday for loved ones.

And I never enjoy wholesale condemnation of people: “everyone overspends at Christmas” “all teenagers are obnoxious” “every man looks at pornography” etc. It’s not very charitable.

Maralise received an oh-so-perfect Christmas gift if you want to click on her name in the first comment (hope you don’t mind Mara, but what are blogs if not to be read?).

Thanks for the post, Justine. I feel like so much of what we hear about Christmas these days is a condemnation of the commercialism, and it feels like you’ve found a good balance of enjoying the gifts and remembering what’s important.

I love this.

My friend cheryl posted a really lovely little piece on how the ‘hullabaloo’ of Christmas really can tie back to the true meaning of Christmas. I loved it. Like Justine, sometimes the commercialization of the holiday drives me bonkers. But every year, I go bonkers wrapping every last thing that could even remotely be called a gift (this year, it stretched to individual packages of saltines and other crackers for each child to have as snacks during the break, for example) — I simply love watching my children open gifts, love trying to recreate the magic of the holiday that I grew up with.

God gives me incredible gifts from my “want list”– not just my needs and I love doing the same for others