Playing Favorites

It’s hard to pick favorites, especially when it comes to Christmas traditions. My goodness, they’re like your children. How can one choose? 

However, I will be choosing a winner from commenters today, and that winner will receive a free copy of As You Are at Christmas. Today I'm the next stop in a Christmas blog hop that shares favorite goodies, books, movies, and memories. Enjoy!

A favorite Christmas treat at our house is Snowballs, a super easy recipe I discovered while teaching middle school.

In a blender or food processor, blend one package of chocolate cream-filled cookies like Oreos, a few cookies at a time until powder-like. Mix the cookie crumbs with a softened 8-oz brick of cream cheese. Spoon mixture into 1 ½-inch balls, place on cookie sheet, and put in freezer to harden – about 30 minutes. In a glass bowl, microwave ½ package of white candy coating or chocolate coating until creamy and smooth. Remove balls from freezer, roll in candy coating, then return to cookie sheet and freezer. Box and give!

My favorite classic Christmas book is The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke. Here's a picture of my 1903 edition titled The Story of the Other Wise Man. Small but powerful.

Last year's favorite read:

Polar Bear Plunge by Linda S. Glaz













Favorite current reads include:

It Really IS a Wonderful Life by Linda Rondeau

                                        Unexpected Christmas Hero by Kathi Macias

Favorite Christmas movie: The Note, (Hallmark, December 2007) based on a book of the same name by Angela Hunt.

Favorite Christmas memory – I have so many! But today’s choice is the year my mother nailed our tree to the floor because it wouldn’t stand up straight. Good thing we had shag (ugh) carpeting. Never did see the holes!

Thanks for stopping by today’s blog hop begun by my agent Linda Glaz of Hartline Literary Agency. Please visit my fellow clients’ blogs and enjoy their Christmas favorites as well. And leave a comment to win a free e-book. 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good LIGHT!

Linda Glaz http://lindaglaz.blogspot.com

Lisa Lickel http://livingourfaithoutloud.blogspot.com

Susan Craft http://historicalfictionalightintime.blogspot.com

Gail Kittleson gailkittleson.blogspot.com

Linda Maran http://lindamaran.blogspot.com 

Karen Wingate www.graceonparade.com/blog

KARLA  http://envisionpublishing.tumblr.com

Patty Wysong -- 18th www.pattywysong.com

Tamara Kraft http://tameralynnkraft.com

Sorrow vs. Joy

Are you having trouble justifying the Joy of the Season since the Connecticut tragedy? The timing is insanely cruel and makes me feel like I’m “singing songs to a heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).

So I’m postponing the Jolly Christmas Blog Hop planned for today. It’s hard to share Christmas memories when I know that Christmas will be so different for so many forever.

But I won’t belabor the horror of last week’s tragedy. Instead, as an educator and parent, I offer a grateful thank you to those who gave everything to protect their students. I commend those who huddled in closets and bathrooms, spreading wings of comfort over their young charges as death lurked nearby.

And I weep for the children who dance today in heaven’s light.

“Why” is the big question. But even with what is known, the answer brings no comfort. There is hope only in knowing “Who,” and peace in recognizing “What.”

We can know Who now holds those little ones in His arms, and we can find purpose by deciding what we will do now because of them.

Last Sunday our pastor reminded us that similar tragedy accompanied the first Christmas. Two thousand years ago, a mentally-deranged leader ordered the murder of baby boys because he feared the one Babe predicted to be king.

It’s a side of the nativity we rarely consider—the wails of women who lost their innocent children to a maniacal murderer named Herod.

Maybe our crèches should have a scowling man lurking in the shadows beyond the star’s light, the pastor said.

How can we declare joy in the face of Newtown’s sorrow?

How can such opposite emotions coexist?

We may not understand the reason, but we can be assured that they do. The gift of God’s light to the world conquers the darkness of sin. The hard part is living now in the divine tension—the tug of war between good and evil.

And so our pastor lit the Advent candle for Joy.

We must not forsake rejoicing because of the sorrow. To numb our hearts to the joy is also to numb ourselves to the pain. And we cannot let those who mourn cry alone.

This Christmas, may we step up to the light with both sorrow and joy in our hearts. Let us bring comfort to those within our reach and beyond. And may we, as the scriptures declare, “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

Romans 12:15

Matthew 2:16-18

Luke 2:10-11 Luke 2:10-11 

Stop. Breathe. Remember.

It’s so easy to get all wrapped up in the Christmas season and miss the message. Especially with so few days until the big event and I have yet to finish the baking and cleaning and shopping and cooking and washing of windows that haven’t been touched since the Fourth of July.

But company’s coming.

Shouldn’t I be busy getting ready? Shouldn’t I be planning better, bigger, more?

Last night I stepped outside and looked to the ridge above Cañon City. There shone the giant star lit each year for the season. Lesser beams spotlighted a small nativity, and farther down the ridge, three travelers.

In spite of my hurry and worry that star simply shines. And that’s what I need to top my Christmas agenda — a simple reminder of a simple child who brought hope and light to harried people everywhere.

Stop. Breathe. Remember.

For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.

—Matthew 2:2 NKJV

A Christmas to Remember

“What fun! We’re getting a living Christmas tree,” I told my two wide-eyed children. “We’ll donate it to the church for their landscaping project after the holidays.”

It’s the thought that counts, right? 

At least my husband had that thought—the one that scurries ahead of everything else and prompts a plan of action. He hooked up the horse trailer as the rest of us piled into the pickup.

Thought number two should have struck when the nurseryman loaded the tree into our trailer with a forklift. But it didn’t. The elusive realization didn’t hit until we got home and shoved the tree out of the trailer and into a double-handled, galvanized-steel tub. My husband and I could carry the little 5-foot tree inside, right?

The tree wasn’t the problem. It was the 300-pound dirt ball attached to the bottom that we couldn’t drag over the threshold. So we pushed the tub up against the garage and waited for our neighbor’s high school-aged son and friend to haul it inside for us.

Rocco, our Jack Russell terrier, didn’t wait. He figured any unmarked soil on his turf was fair ground and christened the tree into the family when no one was looking.

Later that wintry Colorado evening, the warmth from our woodstove embraced the tree and its burlap-wrapped root, and Rocco’s anointing permeated the front room.

I dashed down the hall like a reindeer on a mission and returned with a can of aerosol pine-scented spray…

We didn’t have the heart to call the neighbor boy to take the tree back outside, so we doused the dirt and tried to hide the burlap beneath a cheery Christmas tree skirt.

Indeed, that year we had a Christmas to remember—complete with homemade gingerbread houses and frosted sugar cookies, clove-studded oranges and hot mulled cider. And doggie, well, you know. Either we grew accustomed to the terrier bouquet, or our smellers simply stopped working.

 ‘Twas as close to a barn-like, manger-filled Christmas as we’ve ever come. I think Mary and Joseph may have sampled a similar aroma from their hastily-chosen delivery room. Sheep aren’t the most prettily-perfumed animals around.

And yes, it was the thought that counted.

 

For those of you who read this in my guest post on Fay Lamb's blog, thanks for reading again.

Merry Christmas!