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The True Meaning of Christmas


It’s that time of year again – the Holidays.  My family celebrates Christmas and this being the first year that the girls really seem to understand that Santa is coming, I thought that it would be a good time to make sure that they know the true Christmas story.  Both of the kids, when asked why we celebrate Christmas, will say that it is Jesus’s birthday.  Well, Abby might say “Jesus’s birthday party” but close enough, so we have a decent starting point.  I want to tell them more about Jesus’s birth day.

We have unpacked all of the Christmas decorations and the kids are very much interested in the nativity sets which right now are all sitting on one table awaiting placement around the house.  I had planned to do the Christmas lesson as a storytelling/writing lesson, thinking that having Briana caption Abby’s pictures would solidify the story for both girls, but the fascination with the nativity sets gave me another idea.  I could use the nativity sets, which usually sit idly on various tables around the house, as puppets and make the story come alive for them.


So we sit down and I grab the largest set, which is beautifully carved from wood and was given to us by my in-laws.  I grab the Mary and in a falsetto voice (Why falsetto?  No clue.) I let Mary tell the kids of her immaculate conception and her finding the manger.  The kids are cracking up as poor Mary, in her falsetto voice, asks the innkeeper (who alternately has a comically deep voice) if there is room in his inn.  The innkeeper replies (deeply), “No way.”  Abby adds, “No way, Jose.”  So the second innkeeper tells Mary and Joseph, “No way, Jose.  There’s no room in the inn.”  Both kids were quite disappointed when Mary finally finds the manger.


The kids crack up throughout the impromptu show.  They love to watch baby Jesus fall out of Mary (well, from behind, but from their point of view).  They then try to stuff Jesus back in to see his birth again.  When the shepherd comes to see the baby, Briana asks me “Why did they want to see the baby?”  I reply, “Because they know that he will grow up to be our savior.”  Briana surprises me my saying, “Actually he just teaches us all to be nice to each other so that no one is mean.”  I melt, happy that Sunday school is actually teaching her something and is not just a fun time doing different art projects which is usually how she describes what they did when asked afterwards.


Bree also corrects me…kind-of…quite often.  She tells me that Mary did not let all of those animals get too close to the baby.  She amends Mary allowing the sheep to see baby Jesus to say, “Mary said only one sheep at a time can see the baby, and she said just look, don’t touch.”  Then we get to the part of the story with the wise men.  Abby loses it when I say that one of the wise men bring myrrh.  “That. Guy. Said. Myrrrrrrh.”  She chokes out between giggles.  So every time I say anything about the wise men, I emphasize the myrrh part to continual laughter.  Abby also tells us “I got some myrrh.  It’s kind-of yummy.”  Bree wonders if I think myrrh is yummy too, but sadly I still have no idea what myrrh is.   We google it together and discover that both myrrh (blood movement) and frankincense (joint movement) are used for medicinal purposes.  Guess the wise men worried that Jesus might have heart problems or arthritis.  I tell the kids that all three gifts were very valuable and rare at the time and that’s why they give them to Jesus.   Myrrh is also used in incense, which might have made it a gift too, like giving candles.  Briana also has a hard time believing that there were 3 wise men and no wise woman.  I guess faith has its limits.  (Bad joke when talking about Christmas?  Don’t worry; I didn’t say that to the kiddies.  It’s just between me and…everyone who reads this blog.)  Every time I say the three wise men, Bree says, “No.  The 2 wise men and the 1 wise woman.”  For all of her feminist ways here, she still picks the shortest wise man to be the wise woman, I must point out.


The kids loved the story of Jesus’s birth so we act it out multiple times, adding a nice stone Mary and Jesus as other innkeepers saying “No way, Jose.”  We also add nutcracker wise men as 3 additional myrrh carrying wise men.  Poor Mary must have given birth 20 times before we moved on.


Then we make our Christmas lists for jolly old St. Nicholas, or Santa.  No one wants to cut pictures out of a catalog like last year, they want to draw their own lists for Santa.  Bree writes an “M” and then draws an orange yoga mat.  She writes a “D” by her drum, and a “B” by her “bathing suit that is pink and purple and yellow with a skirt attached”.  Then she gets to her dress and we get hung up.  Briana insists that she wants to write “G” for dress and I keep telling her that dress begins with da-da-d.  Nope.  It’s ga-ga-g.  She sounds it out slowly for me, clearly believing that she is right and poor Mommy is illiterate.  “Mommy, just listen closely.  Ga Ga GaErEhSSS – garess – dress.  It’s not Da Da DaErEhSSS daress – dress.  You have to listen to the sounds, Mommy.”  She patronizes me.  The way that she says it, the G does sound like it fits better and only because I went to a talk at her school this week about the philosophy of the school for Kindergarten and one of the things they specifically said was that they think it’s better (in the short term) to let the kids spell things incorrectly and gain the confidence to try and reason themselves (long story but it makes sense), I let her write G before drawing her gress.  She gets distracted and has to run upstairs to look in her closet and see exactly how she wants her dress to look so I take a picture of her letter with the G and the start of a bodice, but no dress on it yet.


Abby said about 20 things – an iPhone to Facetime with Meghan, her godmother, (whoops…Santa said no iPhones for kiddies), a new Camilla (baby doll), lots and lots of gymnastics, etc.  I’m not sure that her letter to Santa was decipherable, but she was quite proud of it.  Somewhere on the letter she even signed it "A-B-I-G-A-I-L spells Abigail!" She's very proud (and me too) and that she can now spell her own name.


I hope everyone is getting into the spirit of whatever holiday they celebrate this time of year, and I also hope that everyone is taking the time to remember, and share with your kids, what it is that we are truly celebrating. 

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

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