It's Not for the Gifts..

Part of my weekly schedule includes Tuesday night at sushi with my now sushi family. I do not think I've ever done an official blog on sushi night, but it gets mentioned here and there around these parts. However, this blog is not about my sushi family, just a conversation that occurred while at sushi Tuesday.

Tom is a sweet little old man who often gives us advice. I love listening to his stories of taking his wife of well over 50 years out on their first date and he loves listening to us talk about abbrevs and hashtags. So when I mentioned something about setting up my Christmas tree over Thanksgiving break and Tom bah-humbugged me... I was completely thrown off. 

Wait, a second!! Tom, why do you not like Christmas???   

Cue Tom's rant about how Christmas has turned into nothing but about money and stores do not care about Christmas, they care about profits, and everyone just blinks over Thanksgiving to get to Christmas to lavishly spoil people with gifts, and it's only about money and so on.... 

While I do think Tom has a point for some people, I tried to explain to him this:

My favorite part about Christmas is not the gifts. I hate surprises. I'm terrible at buying gifts and it stresses me out each year. My favorite part about Christmas is the songs. The Christmas carols that we get to sing about Jesus' birth. I can sing alto, second soprano, or soprano for almost all of them and I love each and every part the same. It reminds me of the years decades I was in the Christmas show at church. It reminds of the fellowship I got to have with all the cast-mates through practices, dress rehearsals, and shows. The insane amount of clementines that us "angels" ate while waiting to dance in our songs. The sled I got to sing in with this awesome quartet (shout out to Point of Grace). The time we had such a quick change to make it from singing to our angel costume we stripped in the hallway as we were running. Traditions. Christmas Eve traditions. Picture traditions. New traditions that I'm making now that I live in the real world. School traditions with my students. Sausage balls on Christmas morning. Looking at Christmas lights. Looking at the one house by my moms house that is ridiculous every year. And the one house that always has the guy falling off a ladder while trying to hang lights. 

It's way more than just gifts. It's holiday cheer. It's Joy to the World and Peace on Earth. It's excited my whole family will be in town. It's that one time it actually snowed on Christmas morning. It's reading the Christmas story. And singing O Holy Night as many times as I possibly can because it's my favorite of them all. 

I think Tom already had his mind made up, but I know why I love Christmas, and it's not for the gifts.

I was originally going to talk about the Little Drummer Boy. Oops. Maybe tomorrow.