Christmas week

My husband, David, finished school two weeks ago for the Christmas-New Year holidays and since then life has slowed down a bit. We’ve been sleeping in and having more down-time than usual. For many years this is when we would go for a week away in the mountains with our family. This year, with no kids here, we decided not to do that, to instead make new memories. However then our eldest son got engaged and announced the wedding would be January 11, which for us means a trip back to Australia. So we decided to stay home during the days before Christmas: a decision that favours the budget as well as energy-conservation.

Christmas Day was a very quiet day: the quietest Christmas celebration we’ve ever had. The only other time we’ve celebrated that day without parents or kids was a crazy busy day in Indonesia on a short-term missions trip in 1993. (Noting that when we’re in Australia we often have two Christmas celebrations, one with each side of the family, and often not on the day itself.)

David “puzzling” next to the tree.

So what did we do? We chatted with family, ate Christmassy foods, participated in an online Christmas worship service, finished a jigsaw puzzle we’d been working on, played a game of Scrabble, exchanged a couple of gifts, and went for a mid-afternoon walk. We also watched a Christmas concert and then a Christmas movie. A quiet, but happy day.

A strangely fitting day for 2024—a year that has been full of many new and different things, along with big changes. But I won’t jump into a year-end reflection yet (that’s for next week).

We did invite a number of people to join us for Christmas dinner, but for various reasons none were able to come. The sentiment around Christmas is so family-orientated and so “going home” orientated. It’s strange to not do either. But we have been doing Christmas away from our birth families for a long time now. We are very used to a quiet time at home (though it never was that quiet for most of the years we had with three young boys). We're used to celebrating at home and connecting with our Australian family via video calls (or phone in the early days). So, though it was odd, it was not so bad as in those early years. Plus, fast forwarding to the days after Christmas: we had plenty of social interaction with close friends planned for the days following Christmas.

It’s probably more noteworthy that our two youngest sons had their first Christmas without us ever yesterday. They spent the day with my extended family and we were able to have a little bit of time with them via video too.

Twelve years ago I wrote on my blog that I’d had conversations with friends who had much older kids than mine and who wouldn’t see their children for Christmas. In that blog post I wrote about my first ever Christmas away from my birth family (good story, ended with a very late Christmas dinner of a whole fish, including eyes). I doubt my sons had as strange a day as that, but I’m sure it felt a little weird. I was reminded of that today when I spent time checking in with the short-term worker who I’m supervising. Christmas was also weird for her, being away from family, but thankfully she was able to experience the power of belonging to and celebrating with other believers.

This year has been full of change and new experiences for us, but (almost) all of this has been good change. So many Christmas songs are focused on family, they tap into the good feelings of belonging and earthly family. But both of these elements of life are subject to change and also to faults. Being away from family can give you the distance to remember more easily that as a Christian the most important thing in life is that we belong to the God’s family. Though that can be difficult here on earth, is also something that is foundational and though the members we physically live life with change (sometimes daily) the head of the family does not.

I started this blog post without any idea where it would end (as I often do), but I think I’ve found the end! May God bless you this Christmas week, with a greater joy of belonging than you’ve known before.