Christmas Part 1

Jess: I just got a call from Mom and Chris saying that they arrived home safely after our Christmas excitement. They showed up around dinnertime last Wednesday, and we've been having a good time since. We went to New York City on Thursday afternoon to see the Rockefeller tree, and on the way we saw the WTC site, Times Square, a great Italian restaurant, and a couple of other things. It was really freaking cold, but we had a good time and I think they all enjoyed their first trip to NYC.

Friday, of course, was Christmas Eve, so we sat around the house and got some stuff ready for Christmas day, then had delicious stew (made by Wes) and went off to the two services. Mom and I sang and everyone seemed to enjoy that. It was nice to have a service that was out of the ordinary, as well. At some point, we watched one of our traditional movies: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Christmas day was fantastic, of course. Wes and I started it off by making homemade cinnamon rolls for everyone, then Mom and I woke Josiah up--otherwise Christmas would have started at about 3 p.m. We opened all our presents, which was a good time. We did a combination of free-for-all Cain style and the OCD version of Christmas we had at my house. Christmas dinner was wonderful, and then we just sat around watching TV, the most important being A Christmas Story.

We were supposed to go show the family around Princeton on Sunday, but it started snowing at about 10 a.m. and didn't stop until yesterday morning. The wind was blowing so much that our yard has about 2 feet of snow in some places and no snow in others. It's ridiculous. Instead of going to Princeton, we spent yesterday and Sunday playing Wii, watching movies, and reading. It was fun, but relaxing, which is always great for a vacation. I found out that my mom is actually decent at the Wii, which was pretty surprising. We also ventured out for dinner on Sunday, which wasn't too bad until Mom tried to park the car in the garage. Our driveway is uphill and we had about 6 inches of snow in it by then, so she narrowly avoided hitting the garage a couple of times and it took us about 15 minutes to actually go inside once we got home. Good times.

Now, we're sitting around waiting for Dad to show up. He was supposed to be here by now, but got stuck for 2 hours on the Pennsylvania turnpike. It made me glad that we aren't actually traveling anywhere this year. It's too much work. Lol.

Wes: So the other day, one of my best friends, who will remain anonymous (Ryan Anderson), sent me a message on facebook, asking me what was more important: the birth of Christ or the death of Christ. We had a very interesting conversation, starting with another anonumous friend (Jackie Rodriguez), who talked about how she saw the death of Christ as what was most important. Ryan replied that he thought the birth of Christ was the most important. Then I finally jumped in with my two bits, saying that the resurrection was the most important. Half-way through writing it, though, I realized that this is a which-deathly-hallows-is-best question, just like on Harry Potter. Some will hold that the birth of Jesus is the most important, because nothing could have happened without the birth. Some hold that the death of Christ is the most important, because it is the sacrifice of Christ that saved us from our sins. Some hold that the resurrection of Christ is the most important, because we participate with Christ in His resurrection and are made a new creation.

I don't think that having the answer is necessarily important, but I do think it is important to realize that none of them are as important on their own as when they are held together. It is absolutely amazing that God took on flesh and took the title of "God-with-us." That God loved us enough to become one of us is unbelievable. The fact that God showed God's love again by dying in our place is awe-inspiring. That the grave was not strong enough to hold our Lord is worth celebrating over and over and over again. The salvation of humankind is not found in just one of these acts, but in all of them.

Relient K does a really good job of reminding us of this fact. I loved that on Christmas, I could get on facebook and see around fifty statuses (statii?) that all quoted my favorite Christmas song, Celebrate the Day: "I celebrate the day that You were born to die so I could one day pray for You to save my life." It shows me that even in this world that tries so hard to take Christ out of Christmas and make the holidays a commercialized product, people still know and hold to the true meaning of Christmas. It is about celebrating the birth of Christ while at the same time remembering just why God chose to take on flesh.

On a completely unrelated note, Jessica got me my very own chalice and paten for Christmas. (For those of you who don't know what a chalice and paten are, they are the cup and plate used to hold the bread and wine during communion). I feel all pastor-like, now, because I'm not only getting grown-up gifts like sweaters and books, but I'm getting vocational-esk gifts as well. The only thing that I didn't get that would have made this first-real-Christmas-as-an-adult better would have been if I had gotten a cheesy Christmas tie or sweater. Oh well. There's always next year.

Well, we hope that you enjoyed your Christmas and that you are enjoying your four calling birds (shout out to 12 days of Christmas). Goodbye, and goodnight!

You stay classy, World Wide Web!


-Jess and Wes

And the new traditions continue (AKA "Eight Maids a Milking, Seven Maids a Milking, Six Maids a Milking, FIVE MAIDS A MILKING!)

Jess: With a week left till Christmas, our new traditions just keep coming. Last week, we went to the tree lighting in downtown Crosswicks, where Santa showed up in what Wes called a "one-police car open sleigh." The tree is beautiful, and we can see it from about half a mile down the road when it's lit up at night. It was a fun time, and we'll definitely be going back to that every year that we're here. Nothing beats small town traditions.

Yesterday, we went to the light show put on at the local Baptist church. It's about 15 minutes of songs, the Nativity, and light excitement. We got free cookies and hot chocolate and had a wonderful time. The church does a lot of little festivals throughout the year, and I think we learned that they're worth going to.

Today, we spent a couple of hours making our first Christmas cookies together. My family has a recipe we always use that has lemon and honey in it, and it's basically fantastic. Wes isn't a huge lemon fan, but apparently the cookies are already growing on him. We'll see if we can make the eight dozen we made last until my family gets here for Christmas. We compromised on the frosting/sprinkles thing and we have about half and half. Basically, they're amazing, and we had a wonderful time baking together.

Wes: So Jessica has turned me on to a new show. It's not very well-known, so you might not have heard of it, but it's really good. The plot is complex, the characters great, and it's one laugh after another. It's this indistinct TV series that aired for a while on NBC before it was canceled. It's called Friends, and it is amazing. I have absolutely loved watching this show, and can't stop laughing over and over again. It's not exactly a Christmas tradition, but I've been thoroughly enjoying it with Jess.

I am completely done with school work for this year. It's very, very nice to not have to worry about writing a paper or getting 1000 pages of reading done for tomorrow's class. I spent yesterday working on chruch stuff and reading FOR FUN! It. Was. Amazing. And now I get like 2 weeks off where I can do nothing but church work and read for fun! I love it! Really, I just can't wait until I'm out of school and can focus only on personal and church stuff. No more school mixed in with everything.

We're having fun with all of the Christmas stuff, and it's neat walking up to the mailbox and getting at least one new Christmas card each day. Making cookies with Jess today was fun, and even though I was helping her, she managed not to burn a single batch! The cookies, even the yuckie sprinkle ones, taste great, and I can't wait to share them with the church and everyone... Yeah right. I'm gonna eat them all.

This Sunday, I'm giving what I consider to be a cutsy sermon... Not something I tend to do a lot... But it is one of those times where I am hoping that image will stick with people even if the underlying message will not. I'm hoping that, like many of the Christmas movies out there today, even if it doesn't really seem to have much depth, it will stick in the minds and hearts of the congregations so that they will ponder over it later. Maybe God will use this sermon to lay a seed in one of more of my congregants that will grow into a deeply rooted faith.

Also, I met the youth director at a nearby Baptist church yesterday, and he didn't believe me when I told him that I was the "big pastor" of the church. He was confused and kept asking me, "So, like, you're the senior pastor?" It was funny, mainly because I still do not really believe it myself most of the time.

Well, that's all for now! Check back in next week to see how everything is going with the in-laws visiting! We'll see if this house... this family... this town... nay, this nation can survive the coming onslaught!



You stay classy, World Wide Web!


-Jess and Wes

Frosting or Sprinkles?

Jess: I knew it was time for us to write another blog, and we've decided to continue to talk about Advent, but I had no idea what to write about. After being asked 6 or 7 times, Wes finally picked Christmas cookies. So here we are.

My family always made a big deal about Christmas cookies. With Dad being a pastor, I think we focused more on Advent than some other families, so we didn't make cookies until it was almost Christmastime. For us, Advent was also a time of preparation for my Grandma coming to visit for two weeks or so, and we never did anything Christmas-specific until she arrived, usually a day or two before Josiah and I went on break from school. So there we were, somewhere around December 20, with no Christmas decorations, tree, or cookies. Yet we had usually bought all of our presents.

Then Grandma would arrive and the real excitement would begin. We spent most of a day decorating. We'd put up the tree, which was an adventure in itself. We made room in the family room for it, often making the whole room kind of inconvenient for those weeks; then we'd find all of the various pieces of the tree. We had one of those where you had to connect each individual branch to the pole in the center of the tree. Next, we'd spend what seemed like hours un-knotting the lights we had so carefully stored the year before (got a little knot here). Finally, we would be allowed to decorate per my mother's sometimes crazy instructions: "Icicles have to hang straight," "You can't have two of the same kind of ornament too close together," "Make sure you're using the inside of the branches, too," "Did you put anything at the back of the tree?" It was usually at this point where my dad would give up and go to his office. Josiah and I always fought over who got to hang which ornament while my mom and grandma tried to unpack fast enough for us to hang them. Things looked grim...then all of a sudden we would step back and our tree would be beautiful, messy, wonderful, and crazy--just like the process.

In the next day or two after the tree-lighting fiasco, we would go through the Christmas cookie disaster of (insert year here). Mom and Grandma made the dough while Josiah and I watched TV. When they had a cookie sheet full, they would call us in to decorate. We had yellow, red, green sprinkles and multicolored sprinkles, silver balls, and cinnamon candies (I'm pretty sure we had the same bottles of them for most of my life). Mom would very carefully cut out two trees, two snowmen, two Texases, two angels, etc. for each tray. Then Jo and I would decorate them--hopefully without fighting over which bell belonged to whom. The cookies went in the oven and we went back to the TV to start the process again. This went on for ages until the last tray, which was always just four round pieces of dough that we could decorate with as much sugar as we wanted. I don't quite remember what happened after we ate those...

That day or the next, we would also make mints. They're basically just powdered sugar, water, mint extract and food coloring, but I thought they were fantastic. We had to set them out to dry for a day or so before Christmas. Grandma and I usually rolled them out and set them in the dining room, which was a prime spot to run in and grab one without anyone noticing. Somehow, there were always missing mints by Christmas day...

This year, Wes, Tomas, Katherine and I put up the Christmas tree on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. There was no fighting, but I definitely caught myself trying to tell Kat to make sure she didn't put too many of the same ornament too close together. Wes and I will be making cookies and mints, and there's a pretty good chance that he'll be watching TV or playing his XBox while I carefully cut out two of each shape. We'll be decorating with icing AND sprinkles, to combine our family traditions into one. I don't know if it will be the same without the fighting, though...

Wes:
So, as far as Christmas traditions of decorating the tree or making Christmas cookies, my family had, well, none. We just did whatever seemed good at the moment. We kinda all decided together when to put the tree up, and usually that was accompanied by a chorus of groans from each member of the family when we remembered how much work it took to put our Christmas tree up. We had a lot of fun putting the ornaments on it, but it seemed like every year we managed to loose either a number of ornaments or a branch from the tree. I'm still not really sure how this happened, seeing as how everything went back into the same box each year and no one ever got into them except for Christmas decorating. Weird...

But I will say that, when given the choice, I always did love me some frosting decorated cookies. You see, I'm not really a big cake person because I don't like a lot of frosting on things. If it's too sweet, I'll probably just give it to Jess or eat everything but the frosting. But for some reason, I love frosting on Christmas cookies. They are wonderful. So this whole just-put-sprinkles-on-them-and-call-it-quits thing is just not going to fly. I'm the king of this castle, and we're going to do things my way. (If I ask Jess nicely enough, that is). So yeah. Frosting. Way better than sprinkles.

Right now, and for the next week, my life is being consumed by papers for seminary. I am not a fan of having to write a paper that literally determines 100% of my grade and have to do it at the end of the semester. I probably should have taken this class pass-fail, but then we would all know what would be happening: I would not have anything going for me, because then I would just say that it was pass fail and didn't matter and would only apply myself for a "passing" grade, and I should definitely be striving for better than that.

I am also preaching at the Christmas tree lighting at Crosswicks' town hall tomorrow. A fun "sermonette" on Advent and Christmas as seen through the song/movie of the Little Drummer Boy! I was told multiple times to view this as a sermonette and not as a sermon--the difference being duration. A sermon is apparently supposed to be between 12 and 18 minutes (yeah, right, Ryan Barnett!) and a sermonette between 5 and 10. Well, I think I'm in that time limit, but as my friends and loved ones will tell you, I've apparently been known to be long-winded! We'll see, though, come tomorrow, if I have mastered the sermonette.

Well, that is all for now! Tune in next week for a lively discussion on the pros and cons of candy canes!

You stay classy, World Wide Web!

-jess and wes

'Tis the Season

Jess: So, here's the promised Advent post. As many of you may (or may not) have known, Advent is the season of preparation for Christmas (which really does last twelve days, from December 25 to January 6). We're supposed to prepare our hearts for Jesus' coming into the world. But, for most, Advent is the time to go Christmas shopping, clean the house for guests, prepare for meals, and generally get stressed out by life, instead of enjoying God's gift to us.

My family never did the Advent calendar thing, we didn't go shopping on Black Friday, and Christmas was an exciting time for us. My grandma always came to visit for a couple of weeks while Josiah and I were out of school for break. We put up the tree together, made Christmas cookies, and generally just had a fun family time. I didn't ever think of Advent as a stressful time. We sang some of my favorite songs in church, we lit the Advent wreath, and life was awesome.

Last year, Advent was definitely a season of preparation, and a stressful one at that. Wes graduated December 19, we had Christmas with his parents, and then we got married on January 1. There was a lot to do and very little time to do it, but it was fun in its own way. I feel like we missed out on the preparation time, though.

This year, we're doing a much better job of preparing for Jesus to come into the world. We put up our Christmas decorations and have bought all but one of the gifts we're giving. We're trying to think about what Jesus' coming into the world means for us, and realize that the season isn't about how much money we spend, how amazing our gifts are, what kind of food we serve, or how many parties we have. Taking back Christmas from commercialism is hard, but hopefully we can do something. I pointed out to Wes as we were walking down the Christmas aisle last night that I felt like we needed more Christmas decorations--it's amazing how retailers can influence our ideas of this Christian holiday...

Wes: Christmastime is here! Happiness and cheer! (That, by the way, was brought to you by Charlie Brown and friends). So I really like Advent time. Growing up, Advent was the only time of year when my family would do devotionals together around the table. Each night, after dinner, we would light the Advent wreath and go through a mini Bible study. I really loved that time with my family.

Now, Jess and I have the opportunity to make some Advent/Christmas traditions of our own. We've already implemented a couple of things, like making our Thanksgiving guests help set up the Christmas tree and decorate the house. We've also talked about different traditions concerning gift giving. I have a friend who, instead of piling presents under the tree for her kids, gives each of them 3 gifts-- one for each gift given to Jesus. One gift is supposed to be practical (like myrrh), one spiritual (like frankincense), and one fun (like gold). I think this would be a neat tradition to implement when we start having youngster scampering about the house.

This Advent season, my sermons are focusing around the Isaiah passage that is mentioned in each Gospel concerning John the Baptist. Tomorrow, I'm going to be talking about the section "A voice crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord.'" And how a probably better translation would be "A voice crying out, 'In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.'" What does it mean that God has called us to prepare the way for Christ in the wilderness places of hearts. It's a neat take on the Advent call for preparation, and one that I unashamedly stole from Pastor Greg Ronning from TLU.

Well, this was a shorter blog than usual, but I hope that you enjoy. Tune in next week for a Christmas cookie debate and much, much more!

You stay classy, World Wide Web!


-wes and jess