A Very Merry, Nostalgic Christmas

Christmas has come and gone for another year. And it was actually one of my favourite ones since I was little.

It all started on the eve of Christmas Eve...

My family and I that night did what we do every year - we watched our favourite Christmas movies. Usually, we watch one a night in the week leading up to Christmas, but we hadn't this year due to life getting in the way (plus some fun Christmas light sight-seeing walking around the local streets which felt rather nostalgic in the balmy night air). So, instead, we watched all our three favourites - Elf, Home Alone, and Home Alone 2 all in one night for a Christmas movie marathon!

We started with good old Buddy the Elf at 7 pm, "passing through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the swirly twirly gum drops, and walking through the Lincoln Tunnel" to find his dad and the true Christmas spirit. Then at 9 pm, we began the Home Alone journey in the McCallister home. And finally, at about 10:30 pm, we watched the final instalment with Kevin, Marv, and Harry, home alone in New York. (Personally, the second one is my favourite. There are just so many good lines and laughs in that one. Rare that the second movie is better than the first, but hey, John Hughes did it - if anyone was going to do it it was him.) We got to bed at just after midnight, but it was so fun staying up with the family eating snacks and drinking hot chocolate in the aircon together while laughing and enjoying our favourite Christmas movies all in one go.

The following day on the actual Christmas Eve...

I was up out of bed, showered, had baked and iced a cake (red velvet with cream cheese icing, yum!), made little brownie Santa hats (strawberries for hats, *genius, I know*) with my sister (fine, she was the one who actually came up with the hat idea), and helped Mum organise the beginnings of salads for the following day - and all before 1 pm! This felt like such a breakthrough for me, having gotten up before midday(!!), and especially since I hadn’t felt that productive since the middle of the year when I first started truly struggling with this particular bout of depression I'm in.

When I was younger I didn’t realise how much time and effort my mum and grandma put into making, baking, and cooking Christmas food. We always had an abundance of slices, apricot and chocolate balls, salads and meats - and then some - for Christmas day that lasted until just about New Year’s Eve (because who wants to cook again until next year after all that?). It felt like such a blessing to be a part of such a beautiful family tradition even if I hadn’t ‘done much’, and gave me an even greater appreciation for how much my family do for me and each other.

Now, my therapist had said to me a few months ago not to feel guilty if I needed to rest or take myself away to my room to read and relax every now and again rather than being in the kitchen helping or doing something useful around the house. But if I needed to get things done, she told me, God would give me the grace I needed to lift the guilt and get up and help my family. I wasn’t sure about this, and I hadn’t really been up until that afternoon on Christmas Eve when it occurred to me that I had enjoyed being a part of the preparations and even some of the cleaning up in readiness for Christmas.

I honestly felt so overwhelmed when the realisation hit that God had given me the grace to be useful and help with the making and baking - enough that I teared up and felt a lightness in my spirit that I hadn’t felt in a long time. This was what my therapist was talking about, and what I finally felt that I had experienced in a real way.

On Christmas Day...

I got up at 7 am to get ready for my church's Christmas Day service at 8:30. Me, up at 7? Wow! it was a Christmas miracle. Ha. And the Christmas service was wonderful - it was nice to be in church with the parents, grandparents, and siblings, to hear again about the true Christmas miracle of Jesus, and to give and receive hugs and smiles with accompanying "Merry Christmas"es from my church family.

Once we got home, we all enjoyed opening gifts and again, I was amazed at how generous my family is.

People often think that we have lots of money because of the size of our house, how many cars we have, and *maybe* because we actually dress well (insert corny grin and finger guns). But in actual fact, my parents and grandparents bought our house together nearly 20 years ago for a fraction of the price its worth now, many of our cars were inherited and/or are second-hand, and we buy most of our clothes from op shops (we just know what to look for, it's a real talent you know). We've had to live week by week at times (including this year, even in the lead up to Christmas), my father was jobless for nearly a year at one point with seven, sometimes nine of us living on his one income, and we rarely go on family holiday trips.

Trust me though, I wouldn't change a thing. The Lord has continued to provide for us with monetary gifts from others, groceries from our grandparents and the genius budgeting skills of my father. And it has shown me what it truly means to be generous. My parents and grandparents have demonstrated sacrificial giving, grateful tithing, and wholehearted servitude to one another and those around them who are equally more and less fortunate than us (they won't tell you this though, another reason I'm so thankful for the genuine humility modelled to me). Something I maybe never would have witnessed and learnt throughout my childhood and into adulthood without this life I have lived so far.

And honestly, I think that's why at birthdays and Christmases, it is so special to me when all of us give presents to each other. Because my family could save that money and put it towards other things. But they choose to bless one another and give abundantly.

It truly is better to give than to receive.

I also know that God is the real Gift-giver and Blesser behind all of this. It's been a tough year - not just for me, but for my whole family for different reasons. And it hit me, that like my pastor said that morning in the service, you will always be in God's favour when you belong to Him. That's not to say that He always shows it in material ways, but it truly felt like He had favoured and blessed us with one of the best Christmases we've had for a while. We all received beautiful gifts, had delicious food in abundance, and fun and joy were in the air as we celebrated and remembered the birth of Jesus.

My parents and grandparents listened to the song my siblings and I recorded for them on repeat (best idea - we no longer have to sing live on repeat anymore hehe), the dog and kids got in the pool for a swim and played backyard cricket after lunch, and my siblings and I went skating on our new boards. I did stack it and scraped my knee and palms, but it was so fun being outside and enjoying the day. It reminded me of Christmases and summers past when we were little and got new bikes one year. We were out on them immediately, riding up and down our street, just like we did with our new boards this year. All of us had our stacks over the years doing no-hands tricks and flipping into the gutters on the side of the road, spraining wrists and grazing faces and knees, then getting in the pool to 'let the saltwater help it heal' as my mum would put it. So it was rather nostalgic and reminiscent of days gone by. I think that's what made it all so special.

On Boxing Day...

The day started with leftovers and the Boxing Day Test. Can't have Christmas without cricket!

All of us girls got out our new embroidery kits and were 'industrious' (as they used to say) whilst snacking on lollies and listening to the boys yell and jump at the TV when an Englishman was bowled out or an Aussie took a great grab. After lunch, we were out skating again then back in the pool playing volleyball with the dog swimming around us trying to get in on some of the action as well. Dinner was a final Christmas movie and some more leftovers, and by then we were all choccas and ready for bed.

What a Christmas. It was so good and yet today, on Boxing Day, I've had this sense of nervousness and dread weighing in the back of my mind. And after finally talking about it with my darling mother, I realised that I was nervous because the last two days had been so good. It was as if I was waiting for something bad to happen because the good couldn't possibly last. It's what I've come to expect, I realised.

So, I want to change that.

As I sit here typing, I'm choosing to hope and believe that tomorrow will be just as good again - Lord help my unbelief. There will come a day when it won't be as good, but that's life and we've got to take life one day at a time. A new good day will come again. And I can't live waiting for something bad to happen - especially because I love the Lord, which means He favours me and has His hand of peace over me. I'll still need to take my antidepressants for the time being, I will undoubtedly have my teary moments as flashbacks and memories hit, and no doubt daily stresses will get to me as life goes on.

But I choose to believe that tomorrow will be good.

#honestlyimperfect #Christmas #JesusisKing #lifeisgood