Christmas Essentials

Christmas came too suddenly this year - a celebration sliding through all the meticulous preparations balanced between family and two churches.Time restraints kept decorating at a minimum. Because I couldn't find the ceramic advent wreath, a make-shift wreath was created from four votive lights, a central white candle ringed with a pretty beaded affair I found for 70% off on the Thanksgiving clearance shelf at Garden Ridge in Omaha.
Because it was easily accessible, the white Christmas tree got hauled to the parsonage and set up before the tree at home. The parsonage also got it's front door wreath, but in stages: first the live evergreens, then the decorative berry picks, the garland and bow, the lights, and finally the C cell batteries to light the lights. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it was much too cold to hang the large wreath between the shutters on the front of the house. The only one I could hastily find for the front door was the ratty faded old garland wreath with it's ribbon undone and it's drooping poinsettias. Our tree at home was put up with the help of Drew and his friends in three stages on three separate days. Finally, on Christmas Eve it was completely trimmed, although we elected not to string tinsel this year.
In the process, of assembling our last minute Christmas tree, my favorite wreath was found: the one made last year with the white wheat and star-studded organza ribbon, with the gentle family surrounded by the wings of a guardian angel suspended at its heart.
And the last absolutely must have, find, and hang are the family Christmas stockings: John's, Drew's, and mine. At one time there were six stockings that hung from our mantle, or on the wall when we lived in parsonages that didn't have mantle. These are family history in red flannel, embroidered terry cloth, and jingle bells. My grandmother made them for all of us grand children. As we married, she made them for our spouses, and for every one of her great grandchildren until she died. As each of our children have married and established their own homes, they have taken their special ornaments and stockings with them. Now I make them for my family's spouses and children, and will probably make them for their children's children.
I never realized until this year how important, emotionally and spiritually these four symbols of Christmas have become to me. The advent wreath was introduced in Sunday School. I was fascinated by the candles, their colors, and their meaning. Every year I did what I could to set up an advent wreath. The advent candles welcome Christ to our Christmas. As a child and all the Christmases I was home, my dad and I always shopped for the tree together. Having the tree up and decorated with family memories is a welcomes my dad's memory to treasure. And even though the walkway was too snowed in to use the front door, a wreath welcomes all who enter our home with the beauty, peace, truth and love of God symbolized by the nativity of Christ. And the stockings are not about gifts received in them, but Grandma's love that made and gave them - a model of love that prepared me for the love of Jesus.
Most of our decorations and lights remained in the tubs this year - safely kept for another year when perhaps I'll get a head start on Christmas: like putting up lights, outdoor creche and wreath in October before the snow is a foot deep and the temperatures plummet to below zero. The bare essentials were enough this year: the tree, the front door wreath, and advent candles on the table.
I know that Christmas is not about things, no matter how nostalgic or lovely they may be. But sometimes things remind us of the love wrapped around and in them. Cloth is cloth, threads woven together. But the Lord thought it important enough to include the detail in Luke's account of the nativity, ""nd she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swadling cloths, and laid Him in a manger." Luke 2:7