2009

Well, Christmas is over and done with and it is now 2009! I hope all of you have enjoyed the holidays and most importantly kept CHRIST at the center. Christmas is not the tree or the pretty lights, it's not the cookies and the presents.. it is solely a celebration of our Lord's birth. We celebrated Christmas a little differently this year. We didn't have a tree (although with our cat, we never have..) we didn't put up lights, there was no holly or mistletoe. The only real 'christmas-y' thing we did was decorate cookies with some of our friends. God really convicted our hearts this year about how and why we celebrate Christmas and how it's so easy to get caught up in the American way of celebrating this holiday. But we are to celebrate CHRIST. It was hard for me at first.. a Christmas without a tree?! But that doesn't 'feel' like Christmas! Hold up! That isn't what Christmas is all about! (In fact, God warns us about practicing the ways of the heathen in Jeremiah 10.) This is how the world celebrates Christmas. The world LOVES Christmas, but hates Jesus. So why do we get so caught up in it, celebrating it the way the world does? 

We have learned a lot about the origins of many of the traditions associated with the Christmas holiday and none of them are biblical. It's even a little scary how we have bought into these traditions without even knowing their meaning. Many of them seem innocent and nostalgic, but as Chris said.. "if you were told that the delicious chocolate pudding you have been eating all our live was actually made out of sh*t, would you still eat it?" Some may, but as for us, we don't want to eat poo. 

How did we celebrate Christmas? Well, we had some friends over for dinner and games on Christmas Eve. Chris made lasagna and we all decorated cookies. (Yes, Christmas cookies, we didn't think there was any harm in that..)

Chris decided to go all out and instead of conform to the what the cookie cutter was supposed to make, he let his creative juices flow and transformed the traditional shape into something else. Can you tell what these cookies were supposed to be?

We had a church service on Christmas day and then had dinner with some other friends. 

The day after Christmas we thought we'd do some shopping.. bad idea. We went into the city and the one store we really wanted to go to closed early (Jewish owned) so we hit up Macy's on 34th street. It was a ZOO! They even had escalator patrol officers to make sure that people were moving and getting on and off the escalators in an orderly fashion. wow. 

I only had to work Monday this week- a very big plus to working at a college. So Chris and I have enjoyed some time off with each other. We went to the Museum of Natural History, walked around the city and did some shopping, and took in our favorite view:

We are now off on a mini road trip to Maryland to meet my family at my Aunt and Uncle's house for the weekend. I think we might hit up DC while we are there which will be really fun since Chris has never been there and it's been over 10 years since I have seen it as well. 

What are you all doing for the weekend?