Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year
/The Rowdy Santas and I are partying and celebrating the holiday in high style. Here are a few choice thoughts on the season that celebrates the hope of peace on earth, good will toward all.
Merry Christmas!
It is in the old Christmas carols, hymns, and traditions—those which date from the Middle Ages—that we find not only what makes Christmas poetic and soothing and stately, but first and foremost what makes Christmas exciting. The exciting quality of Christmas rests on an ancient and admitted paradox. It rests upon the paradox that the power and center of the whole universe may be found in some seemingly small matter, that the stars in their courses may move like a moving wheel around the neglected outhouse of an inn.
G.K. Chesterton
Christmas begins with anticipation. The child in all of us yearns for the beautiful gifts this season brings. Remember when you were a child, waiting for Christmas morning when all the glories of wrapped presents, filled stockings, lighted trees, and family feasts would be revealed? Often, when we become adults, we lose that childlike expectancy. Christmas sometimes seems more a chore to get through than a pleasure to savor. But the joyous simplicities of the season can still weave their magic, if we rediscover the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
Renew your sense of anticipation. Acknowledge the yearning of your heart through the symbols of Advent, where the church awaits the coming Redeemer. Feel the joy of Christmas morning, when the Gift is given and God has come to his people. And in Epiphany, honor the sacredness of life, as wise men and women through the ages have learned to do. Let a sense of anticipation renew your heart in this festive winter celebration.
Celebrate the abundance of Christmas by counting the blessings you have now, and anticipating that the goodness you choose to experience today is a sign of the goodness you will experience tomorrow. Take the time to savor the delights of this season—and you will rediscover the joys of anticipation.
(from Christmas Abundance by Candy Paull)
We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more.
Henry Ward Beecher