Growing up, I will never forget some of our family’s Christmas traditions.  Every year we would do certain things the same as the year before that.  For instance without fail I would get in trouble every christmas eve day.  I would be so wired up and ready for the big day that I would do something stupid and find myself causing stress in someone else’s life.  That was one of the unspoken Christmas traditions.  There were tons of other ones which we practiced every year faithfully.  One of them was setting up our families manger scene.  This is something that has become close to my heart.  I look back on those times with great memories.  As a family we would “open” up the manger scene and set each piece in it’s place.  I say open it up because each piece was carefully wrapped in tissue paper.  It was a grab bag of sorts.  You never knew which piece you were going to get.  However secretly inside, I always wanted to be the guy who unraveled the tissue and found a sweet little baby Jesus.  Anyway, once you unraveled your piece we would describe what part in the story the piece played.  This whole process got more and more theological as three of the four siblings went off to Bible College.  While I was in high school I can remembering coming up with different analogies and stories describing why the “ten thousand lambs” (It seemed like there were that many anyhow…) were at the manger scene, “The Lion and the Lamb”, “The sacrificial Lamb”, “Jesus was the good shepherd”, “All we like sheep have gone astray”, as I write this now, I am chuckling thinking about my sister Heather coming up with new and Biblical explanations of those little lambs.  Good times…  After the manger was all set up, my dad would open up his Bible, and the little ribbon would lay neatly open to Luke, and we would reread the gospel story once again.  What a genius’ my mom and dad were…  What a tradition.  

The other day I realized that without even thinking we began doing something very similar with our kids.  The manger scene is quite different, and the way it was done was also different, but the idea remains the same.  I suppose you can say that the tradition will be carried on in my house.  Here are some pictures of the “Opening of the manger scene” 2008.  

Here we are with my kids being 3 and almost 2 and I’m so excited to see what explanations they come up with when the donkey pops up, what do they do with that donkey.  I can’t wait to see where they theologically place the wisemen, or magi… or hmm… what were they?  I am looking forward to hearing if the angels sang or said, “Glory to God in the Highest”…  AH!  It’s going to be great… Did the magi/kings ride camels or horses…  (Thank you hallmark for all of your inaccurate images… but that’s another post…) We had a great time explaining the story of God, Jesus, coming to earth.  

What traditions do you have?

Merry Christmas!!!

~Peter