When I think of our family Christmas Eve traditions, they always bring a smile to my face: Gathering around the Christmas tree to read Luke 2 (including reenactments when the kids were little—I’m so excited for next Christmas when we’ll have little grandkids to do our reenactments!!!), the kids hanging their stockings on chairs by the tree before bedtime in anticipation of Santa filling their stockings and leaving them the things on their Christmas wish list during the night, and others. But one Christmas Eve tradition is at the top of my most cherished memories list.
After reading Luke 2, we do our gifts to Jesus for the upcoming year, and we’ve been doing this tradition since Zach was 2. Christ gives us so much—everything, really, so we take the time to write down on an index card a few things we want to do the upcoming year as our gift to Him. Then we put our “gifts” in this little box, and it sits on one of our sofa tables throughout the year as a reminder. We’ve been using this same box since we began this tradition 30 years ago, and it’s survived four children and many moves. And one of my major regrets is that I didn’t save the kids’ gifts each year, especially the ones from when they were little. Some of the ones I remember are…
- “I’ll try harder to be nicer to my sister.”
- “I’ll try harder to clean up my room.”
- “I’ll try harder to read my scriptures and say my prayers every day.”
- “I’ll pick up my toys.”
- “I won’t hit my brother.”
- “I’ll do better to think about Jesus.”
As the kids got older, their gifts also matured, and there was always a special spirit in our home when we were thinking about what we’d like to do better during the coming year.
I have found, through the years, that I sometimes write down the same gifts year after year. I guess I’m still a work in progress, and that’s okay. The important thing is that there is progress. But that’s a whole different blog post 😉
Christmas 2007 was the first Christmas Zach wouldn’t be home for the holidays—he was serving his 2 year mission for our church in Greece. And although I was sad about this, and there was definitely an empty place in our home that year, there wasn’t anywhere else I’d have wanted him to be.
Zach had sent his gift for us to add to the box on Christmas Eve, and I was so happy he’d remembered our family tradition.
I did really well with him being gone until we sat down on Christmas Eve to do our gifts to Jesus. Then it hit me really hard, and I really, really missed him.
Everyone always writes their name on their gifts, and we pass the prior year’s gifts out before we write down our new gifts. Everyone can choose to read theirs aloud or to themselves.
John was handing them out to everyone and came to Zach’s from the previous Christmas. This is what it said:
John handed it to me, I opened it, and this is what it said towards the bottom:
“I love you Mom! I’m thinking of you even though I’m not there.”
I kinda’ lost it at that point. And just typing this, 11 years later, still brings tears to my mom eyes.
My son had known, a whole year before, that his mom would be having a bit of a hard time the next Christmas with him being gone.
So he left me a message of love and great comfort.
It was a tender mercy, for sure. A huge tender mercy.
I still have this little gift—I keep it in my scriptures.
And I don’t think Zach knew he’d be giving two gifts that Christmas during our simple Christmas Eve tradition.
One to the Lord.
And one to his mom.
This is so amazing Susan. I live this tradition.
Thank you! It’s been such a memorable one over the years. 🙂