What Time is it When the Calendar Strikes December 1?

What time is it when the calendar strikes December 1? It’s Party Time! At our house we make the entire month of December a celebration of Christmas, and that takes a lot of the “work” out of all those holiday preparations.

When I was homeschooling my ten children, they looked forward to the holidays with huge expectations. Of course, all children love Christmas, but like so many homeschoolers, we had more children than money. We could not afford to attend costly Christmas performances or take family trips. Our holiday celebrations had to be cheap and close to home. As a result, we learned to make every aspect of our Christmas preparations into a series of little parties. By making the events leading up to the big day as much a part of the celebration as Christmas Day itself, we were able to satisfy the desires of those little hearts for a magical Christmas season.

One of the things I did was to check out the television listings for special programming. We did not have cable so were limited to the three networks, but that limited selection provided everything we needed. I noted when A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlotte’s Web, and other special programs would be televised, and I always made it a point to watch those programs with them.

I designated one Saturday as Fudge Making Day. No one was required to join in, but everyone did. We made a huge amount of chocolate and peanut butter fudge which we stored away for Christmas, but everyone had to taste everything and scrape the pans. By the time we finished, they were all full of fudge.

For these occasions I allowed everyone to be as involved as they wished, but sometimes I had to really think about what some of their contributions could be. One year when Victoria was only two years old, she really wanted to help. I put a line of miniature marshmallows, a line of chocolate chips, and a line of pecan pieces on the counter. I then stood her four year old brother on one chair and her on another and told them to eat the various ingredients so that I could make certain that they were good enough to put into the fudge. I told them that they were “quality control” and that if they found any pieces that were not good, they had to let me know right away. Every few minutes I would ask, “Is everything still okay?” They assured me that everything was okay. By the time they had eaten everything that I had put on the counter for them, I had finished making most of the fudge. They felt very important that year because they had made sure that the fudge was “safe to eat.”

Every year we had a gift wrapping party and a separate tree decorating party—we always put up the tree the closest Saturday to December 10. I turned on Christmas music while we worked and provided “treats” in the form of cheap store brand sodas and a big bowl of M&Ms.

Daily Bible reading was always part of our lives, but at Christmas I put aside our regular reading so that the last couple of days before Christmas we would read the entire Christmas story from the Bible. By reading the accounts from all four Gospels, we were able to cover everything that the Bible records concerning Jesus’ birth.

I have known families who are able take lavish trips to celebrate Christmas; they go to ski resorts, or they take cruises, or they rent a house on the beach in Maui. I am certain that they have some wonderful Christmas memories, but I suspect that the most precious component of those memories is the time they spent together at those various vacation spots.

Love and friendship are free. By taking the ordinary things that have to be done to prepare for Christmas and turning them into special traditions, we can make all that “work” the best part of the holiday. We can stop dreading the various tasks that must be performed and start looking forward to a month-long celebration of Jesus’ Birthday that every family member will cherish for a lifetime.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker.  Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master's degrees before their seventeen birthday is told in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

                                                                         
                                    

A Gift from the Heart

What is the best gift you ever received? I’ll bet that the one that comes to your mind first was not an expensive item. Perhaps it was a small gift you received on a Christmas morning when you were a child; it may have been a meal that someone prepared for you when you were ill; perhaps, it was words of encouragement that someone offered when you felt that you could not go on. Whatever you consider the best gift you ever received, it was probably one that was given from the heart.

 As we approach this holiday season, many of us are struggling financially, and most of us have gift lists that are bigger than our bank accounts. We would all like to be able to lavish extravagant gifts on those whom we love, but, the truth is, that those costly gifts are often quickly forgotten. This season I want to encourage you to look to your heart to find the solutions to your holiday gift giving.

Forty-five years ago my husband John and I took a trip to Kansas to visit my maternal grandparents. John had not met them before, but the three of them liked one another immediately. One afternoon John and my grandfather went fishing, and while they were gone, my grandmother told me that she wanted to give John a gift but that she did not have anything she thought he would want.

I assured her that John did not want a gift, but she insisted. Finally, she said, “I know! I’m going to polish his shoes for him.” I assured her that John would not want her to polish his shoes, but she would not be deterred. She had noticed how well-groomed he was, and she remarked to me that a man who was that concerned about his appearance would love a shoe shine.

In spite of my protests, Grandma went into the room where we were staying, picked up his dress shoes, and worked with shoe polish and a brush until they gleamed. She looked very happy as she worked on those shoes, and when she was finished, she proudly placed them next to the door so that he would see them as soon as he returned. I had not thought about that incident for years, but yesterday John mentioned it to me; he said that he was so humbled by her act of kindness that he had felt close to her from that moment on.

My grandmother had virtually no money, but she was a compulsive giver. She never wanted anyone to leave her home empty handed, and she was always able to find the perfect gift for any individual. When she was in her nineties, one of her sons signed her up for Meals on Wheels. As soon as she began receiving the meals, she asked the volunteer who delivered hers about his family. She discovered that he had two little girls, and after that she made certain that she always had cookies in the house. Each day when he delivered her lunch she gave him two large cookies which she had carefully secured in plastic wrap—one for each of his girls.

I can never remember receiving a purchased gift from my grandmother, but I remember all of the times that she made tea parties just for the two of us. These were not child’s tea parties with fake tea in toy cups. She made real tea with cream and sugar and served it with crackers and butter in her best cups. The tea parties always occurred when we were alone. Many cold winter afternoons were spent drinking tea and talking. As one of twenty-two grandchildren, I felt very privileged to have her undivided attention as we enjoyed our tea, and I opened my heart to her. After her death I discovered that she had spent the same kind of quality time with each of her other grandchildren. She had tailored those times spent with each of them so that the two of them were engaged in something that was special to that particular grandchild.

In The Vision of Sir Launfal, James Russell Lowell writes, “(It’s) Not what we give, but what we share—For the gift without the giver is bare.”  A gift from the heart always costs the giver more than a purchased item because it requires that the giver share himself with the one receiving the gift. When we perform a task that requires an expenditure of our time and energy, we are saying, “I care enough about you to give up a little part of myself to benefit you.”  Gifts from the heart require a good deal of thought and effort on the part of the giver, but, in the long run, they are the gifts that we always remember.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker.  Her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother tells her own story of educating her ten children from the first grade through masters' degrees.  For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

Thank God for Fleas

As Thanksgiving approaches many of us are compiling our personal list of things for which we are thankful. I, too, am compiling my list, and in doing so I am putting at the very top, “Thank you, God, for fleas.”

I learned about the importance of fleas from Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch Christian woman who, along with her other family members, hid Jews from the Nazis when Holland was under occupation. Corrie and her sister Betsie were middle-aged spinsters when they were arrested by the Germans and eventually sent to the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. Because Ravensbruck was among the worst of the camps, from the time they were first arrested Corrie had prayed diligently that they would not be sent there.Yet, Ravensbruck turned out to be the final destination for these two remarkable women.

The sisters were assigned to Barracks 28, a long gray building with numerous broken windows covered by rags and communal beds consisting of platforms stacked three high covered with filthy, stinking straw.On that first day when Corrie and Betsie were assigned their places on a middle platform, they discovered that the straw was infested with fleas—biting, stinging vermin. It seemed to Corrie that fleas were the one thing that would make their incarceration at Ravensbruck even more torturous.

When Corrie began to complain about their circumstances, Betsie reminded her that the Bible says we are to give thanks in everything, and she began to thank God aloud that there had been no inspection when the women entered the barracks, and they had been able to bring in their Bible. Then she thanked God for the crowding because that meant more women would hear the gospel and be saved. Finally, Betsie thanked God for the fleas! As far as Corrie was concerned, that was the last straw. Corrie refused to join Betsie in thanking God for the fleas until Betsie reminded her that fleas were part of the place where God had put them. Grudgingly, Corrie took Betsie’s hand and joined her in thanking God for the fleas, although she was certain that this time Betsie was wrong.       

The two sisters immediately began a nightly meeting of prayer and Bible study where everyone was welcome to participate. Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Eastern Orthodox women joined in the prayers and singing, and others listened. The sisters’ Bible was written in Dutch, but they translated their reading into German so that more of the women would understand. Those women, in turn, passed the words of scripture along the aisles translating them into French, Polish, Russian, and Czech.

At first, the sisters were very fearful when they called their meetings.  In their previous barracks they had been accustomed to having the guards exercise rigid surveillance with half a dozen guards always present. In Barracks 28, however, there was very little supervision. At first the sisters were puzzled by this lack of supervision, but they later learned that the guards refused to enter the barracks because of the fleas. God had provided the fleas to keep the guards away from the nightly Bible study and worship where many women would come to know Christ.

In these difficult times many of us are fighting battles that seem to involve an inordinate number of fleas. We have experienced loss of income, dwindling home values, and failing businesses. It is almost impossible not to be angry and discouraged when we see everything we have worked so hard to achieve snatched away by circumstances beyond our control. Yet, the Bible tells us that not only are we not to be resentful, we are to actually give thanks for everything that comes into our lives.

If you feel that this Thanksgiving you have little to be thankful for, don’t concentrate on what is missing in your life. Thank God for the fleas, and trust that He is using them—every single annoying one of them—to bring about something beautiful. Trust that one day you will look back and understand how He used the fleas to bring about His perfect plan in your life.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother, tells her own story of homeschooling her ten children from the first grade through master's degrees.  For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.