This week at #TheLoft we are sharing our Christmas traditions! Looking forward to seeing how other bloggers around the world celebrate their Christmas! The Loft is open – come on up!
When I saw the topic for this week’s link up at The Loft, I smiled and then started to wonder what on earth I would write about! This Christmas is unique and will be unlike any Christmas that I have previously encountered with regards to tradition. The 25th December 2014 will be my first Christmas as a wife, as a cook for Christmas dinner and alone with my husband. We decided to take time out together for our first Christmas as man and wife – to start our own traditions, to enjoy one another’s company and to have a laugh as we attempt to enjoy a Christmas roast!
We wanted to bring our own ideas of what Christmas should look like based upon our own experiences of many Christmas days celebrated with our families. It is important to be respectful and understanding of each other as you embark on ‘leaving the nest’ so to speak, but without undertaking a full migration away from those happy and important memories.
Here are some of the ideas we have decided upon for our Newlywed Christmas:
- Two Christmas Puddings – one for Christmas Day and another to be saved for Easter
- A special Christmas breakfast with croissants, juices etc.
- Turkey with all the trimmings
- Sending out Christmas cards
- Attending church on Christmas morning (hopefully, provided we don’t actually bur down the kitchen preparing lunch!)
- When to open gifts – should it be in the morning or the afternoon… hmmmm
- A nativity set on display
- Christmas decorations on our tree and some indoor lights around the window
To be honest, we have more traditions to keep, create and discard – this is a learning curve. Especially for other Christmas celebrations to come. That age old question “Are we going to your parents, my parents, or having them over ours for Christmas Day? What about Boxing Day? Are we doing anything for New Year?” For some people, this debate has often made the holiday season a battlefield of selfishness, arguments and unwanted attitudes regarding their family members. I pray that as Joel and I grow in our marriage and develop stronger relationships with our extended family, that we will not be subject to heated discussion and disagreement.
Christmas should be a time of rejoicing, praising and sharing with others about the Lord Jesus coming into the world to save it. God is not on some distant cloud uninterested in our problems, failings, grievances, pain, suffering etc. No. He is so interested in us – so loving, so kind, so giving, that He came down into our world. Our familiar world of pain and injustice. He experienced loss, suffering and death. For us. But death could not hold Christ down. Nor will death have its grasp on us!
A Message of Reconciliation
When we believe in Christ, the old passes away and the new has come!
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)
Thus, there is something much bigger than tradition. There is something to shout from the rooftops rather than an argument about who’s relative you should stay with this year. Although Christ’s birth is central to Christmas, it is the message of reconciliation that people often overlook.
Through Jesus we are reconciled to God.
There is no sin too big that we cannot be forgiven. Nothing surprises God. If we are truly sorry for the wrong things that we have done (the biggest thing we can say sorry for is ignoring Christ completely), and we turn from this and look instead to what Jesus did for every single person and then place our trust in Him – we are forgiven, made right in the eyes of God and there is NOTHING that we need to do or that can be done for God to love us more or less. We will continue to struggle and make mistakes. But we have been reconciled to God by the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ is on our side – but do we believe that?
Christmas is a time of tradition, merriment, joy, family and Christ. However, Christ has given the greatest gift which has been given from generation to generation.
This year, will you accept the gift of reconciliation to God? It costs nothing because Jesus Christ paid it all.
An Anchored Hope 
I’m so excited for you, for your first Christmas as a married couple. I think it’s so wise to take some time and decide how to fit in both families, but also how to create some of your own traditions. I’m praying that this is a very special Christmas for you!
Thank you so much Rebekah – we are definitely appreciative of your prayers! It is new and exciting, as well as being unknown and strange. Looking forward to hearing all about your Christmas! God bless!
Enjoy your first Christmas together! Such a special time! I love how you and hubby are making your own traditions.
Thank you Cate! It is a very special time – I hope you have a great Christmas too! God bless 🙂
Sunday night we finally put up and decorated our tree. And I put on the “Our First Christmas Together” ornament. For the twenty-first time!
Get one of those. Whatever you do, get an our-first-Christmas-together ornament. It makes me smile every year as I put it on the tree and think about all God has brought us through. From our first Christmas to the present.
Here’s to a wonderful first Christmas together for you and your hubby, and God’s faithfulness in every day.
Thank you Karen – that is such a great idea! 😀 I hope you have a wonderful Christmas too! God’s faithfulness is so comforting and wonderful 🙂 Thank you for the reminder! God bless! 🙂
Oh Ruth…your first Christmas as husband and wife will be so special. I am excited for you. I love, love, love the part of your post about reconciliation. That hits very close to home for me right now. Thank you for the reminder. You really blessed me today.
We are really looking forward to it! It is such a comfort and a joy to know that we have been reconciled to God – we just need to rest at the foot of the cross and into the loving arms of our Saviour. Really thankful that you were blessed by this post. Big hugs 🙂
Happy first Christmas together, Ruth! This is one you will look back on with special memories, for sure! But please do enlighten this non-Brit about Christmas pudding. I’m a bit alarmed at a pudding that will keep until Easter! Thoughts of first aid and food poisoning run through my American mind. Because to us any pudding has milk…So just what is it? And maybe somethime you could share a recipe??
Thank you Sheila! Christmas pudding is delicious and it keeps for a long time. We buy it from the supermarkets, but many people make their own – although it takes a little while to make! Here is one of many recipes http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/ultimate-christmas-pudding (there is no one way to make it, you can add or take away certain things, as long as you keep the main ingredients!) It is a traditional Christmas dessert in England. 🙂 Hope this helps in some way!
Thanks, I checked that link out. It looks yummy. Sort of like a fruitcake, isn’t it? My Welsh friend had something similar for her wedding cake, if I’m not mistaken. As long as it takes to make, no wonder you buy it!!
It is a bit like fruit cake I guess… but it is served hot often with custard or cream 🙂 It is lovely!
This is not fair!! Making me hungry for some when I can’t have it! Sounds lovely!!
Will have to somehow send you some… haha – not sure how you go about sending a Christmas pudding in the post… hee hee 🙂
Thanks anyway–it would probably be like the Christmas cookies my mom sent one year. The birds, I’m sure, loved the Christmas crumbs!! LOL!
LOL 😀
Enjoy this season of new traditions! It’s good to be evaluating what you like and don’t like, making your new family unique. We have friends from England, so I’ll have to check out what kind of pudding she makes! Sounds good.
Congratulations! Enjoy your newlywed Christmas, and may you find many traditions you will enjoy for years to come. Via The Loft. 🙂