My youngest arrived home from college last weekend. Full-time outdoor Christmas light mode kicked in immediately.
He tried stabbing plastic stakes into our granite-infested ground for lighting the circle drive. That was a big no.
Plan B became Plan A: Enable the International Space Station to navigate off our Live Oak tree and Texas Persimmon bushes during Central Texas nighttime hours. We Woolseys never lack for ambition.
Such a goal requires an opulent amount of Christmas lights. Think profuse. If Christmas lights were rabbits and had been cooped up for months on end, that’s the mixed-metaphor bumper crop we’re needing.
Lavish lights make Christmas Christmas.
What ingredient makes Christmas Christmas in your world? Mom’s bourbon cake? Stockings full of socks and Pez dispensers?
I know one family who blindfolds a member and has them shoot a pellet gun at a world map, and the Christmas foods of the country most harmed become next year’s feast. (I do live in Texas, you know. And, yes, I actually love this idea.)
What Christmas traditions anchor your heart to Jesus and His gift to the world? The reading of Luke 2? A nativity scene filling every open space in the house? Candlelight worship?
Traditions create photos we scroll to throughout life. They anchor us to people and place. Souls constantly encountering change need connecting with physical routine that doesn’t.
Christmas traditions offer an intermission from the intense seafaring adventure or depressing tragedy we star in. They transport soul and body to a time and place that comforts and restores. Especially when they involve the miraculous story of God coming to earth.
Set a place for traditions around the table this season. Your soul could use it.