Then we came home to our simpler decorating: a string of lights across the front, a modest tree with a hodgepodge of ornaments, a kid-friendly crèche with plastic figures, and a few other family knickknacks. Oh yes, the traditional poinsettia from the hardware store’s Thanksgiving early-bird sale. By January it had lost most of its leaves. Blame my black thumb.
I don’t think my kids were irreparably damaged because we didn’t go “all out.” The best part was that after New Year’s, there wasn’t as much a hassle for the stuff to go all-in, as “back in” storage boxes.
For that, blame their mother’s leaning toward simplicity. This photo depicting simpler living, which I cut from a magazine years ago, is framed and hangs in a bedroom. The lyrics around the edge are from a 19th century Shaker song:
‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free,
‘Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.
I see this framed saying as I come into that bedroom to change a grandbaby's diaper. I spot it as I come around the corner with a basket of laundry to fold on the same bed. Constantly it reminds me that “love” and “delight” last lots longer than “stuff” (and certainly that holiday poinsettia!).
Sometimes when I hear someone say they bought “themselves” a Christmas gift, I have to smile inside. Maybe they indulged themselves by self-giving, but only God can provide the true “Christmas gift”--and it was a lavish one:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 John 3:1 NIV).
Nothing can compare.
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