This year our Jarai church had their Christmas celebration Saturday night, December 28th, and Sunday morning, December 29th. Both days include a meal, singing, and preaching. Our kids enjoyed wearing Khmer school uniforms for the Christmas service. It’s a highlight of their church year.

The month of December was very full with helping our church prepare for the celebration. Josh and I directed a youth Christmas pageant. We provided the script, costumes, and props and held three different rehearsals. There were two readers while the rest of the youth acted the various scenes out. This year we added the scene with the shepherds, and the sheep (elementary students) were quite a hit. The youth preformed their play both Saturday night and Sunday morning.

I wrote and taught a new tune to some verses in Jonah for the older elementary/jr. high group to sing. I worked with the piano player three different times on playing Christmas carols. I also worked two mornings with a few people who were leading the singing on singing harmony. Josh preached at the Saturday night gathering. It’s really fun to be able to work together as the body of Christ.

Christmas is a very full time of year and also a very fun time to be together and celebrate. For the Jarai Christmas celebrations take place at church – nothing happens in the homes.

Our kids survived pretty well. I was a bit nervous about going to a late service (Saturday night) and then getting up for a very long service and day Sunday morning. Thankfully, Ezra took a nap on Josh’s lap while I helped with the play and the singing. He was so tired!

We had a lovely day celebrating the birth of Christ. I feel like it’s the one day of year we hide away in our house and spend the day together as a family. Christmas Eve we delivered 13 bags of fruit, candy, and a Gospel tract to our neighbors. We always sing at least one Christmas carol. Afterwards we returned home for our traditional meal of tacos, followed by Christmas cookies, hot chocolate, popcorn, and watching the Muppets Christmas Carol.

Christmas morning we had our normal breakfast before we started in our the celebrations – to keep anyone from going crazy with hunger. We sang carols and then Becca did a Christmas play using Little People. She quoted Luke and Matthew. Afterwards the kids gave out gifts to each other and us.

Lunch was cinnamon rolls and omelettes. The cinnamon rolls came out well (the yeast was good), so I was happy the rest of the day.

In the afternoon we read, relaxed, and played games. We had our first ever family four-player games of Dutch Blitz. Isaiah learned how to play. It was an exciting day!

JD & Kim Crowley join is for Christmas dinner. They came in time to watch the kids’ Christmas pageant. We were honored to have the Crowleys for dinner – it was their first time in over 36 years to be without any one of the children. After dinner we sang carols together.

After the Crowley’s left, we gave the kids their gifts from us. It was a lovely day and we all enjoyed being together and celebrating the birth of Jesus.

I’ll add one more thing – each year for Advent we have the tradition of singing Advent/Christmas songs together each night before bed. A different child gets to light and blow out the candles each night. Each person gets to choose a song to sing. We do this every night until the end of December. Some favorites this year were Go Tell It On The Mountain (Anna), We Three Kings, and Hark, How the Bells. The last week our kids started enjoying singing Dives and Lazarus. It ended up in our carol book and became a favorite the last week of the month.

A Christmas tradition for our family is making giant gingerbread people. Each child makes a pattern for his/her cookie. Decorating is a blast, and it takes days to eat the whole thing!

We also made normal cut out Christmas cookies on another day. I was quite impressed with our kids decorating skills. This was the first year I made my own colored sugar sprinkles. We still have some leftovers cookies.

Can you guess what Anna lost? She truly lost it – maybe in the tamarind tree. We’ll never know.

The first Friday evening in December, our family had our traditional Christmas decorating party. I was feeling especially festive this year (no concussion 2017 and no pre-fulough packing stress 2018). However, shortly into our party my joy was gone. Our children quibbled over who got to put up certain ornaments and over whose turn it was to do all the special things we do for the month (candle lighting, advent calendar, turning on the lights, etc). It was like the evening was turned into a fights for one’s rights. Very frustrating. Then I was reminded of the reason for the celebration. Jesus came to save us from our sinful selfishness. To save us from demanding our rights. I stopped and reminded our kids that Jesus came to save them from their attitudes. We are so grateful.

Later as I reflected on our evening, I was reminded again – Jesus came to save ME from my selfishness. Sometimes Christmas can turn into an event with plans that revolve around me – what I want to do with the kids, traditions we need to keep, things that need to get done to celebrate. It’s easy to get upset when things don’t work out the way I want them to or when I’m disappointed. Jesus came to save me from the sin of insisting on things my own way – from the sin of serving myself and not others. So thankful He came to save. Come let us adore Him!