Christmas History, Meanings and Epiphany

  I promised last month to write a post on the History of Christmas.  We have spent the last 7 years wearing ourselves out trying to make the right decisions about holidays and paganism.  I won't go into all the things we did feel convicted to give up and felt freedom in keeping, but I would like to share some of the resources we found related to explaining the History behind Christmas.  
  There is so much contemplation over celebrating Christmas on December 25.  Through these resources, we were able to come to peace with practicing Christmas purely as a celebration of His birth and His coming and not to become so wrapped up in the actual date.  

  This documentary is very informative about dates and how incredible our Creator is!  I highly encourage you to take the time to watch it.  

The Star of Bethlehem

  This is a clip from one of our favorite movies, "Why Do We Call it Christmas?"  This is the 12 questions from the movie.  We love this and it is so informative even for adults!  

Epiphany ~ January 6

  Like I said before, our friends introduced us to the Holiday of Epiphany.  I had never even heard of it before!  We have not celebrated it yet, and I'm not sure if we really will or how it will look for us, but I wanted to share with you anyway.  

  Here is a wonderful blog post on the History of the day and how another family celebrates Epiphany.  

Three Kings Day Celebration

  So in conclusion, it's important to remember, never to stop seeking Him!  Be fervent in your search for wisdom.  No matter how or when you celebrate, keep Christ in the center!  He is truly the Reason for ALL the Seasons!

Christmas Blessings

  

     You've heard the saying "a Christmas Miracle has happened"...….well, I'd like to share our "Christmas Miracle" story with you.  It starts out just as your typical Christmas story starts.  Work was really slow and Ronnie had gotten sick and was not able to work even if the work was available.  Derek had ask for a computer for Christmas.  I knew money was too tight for us to be able to afford that.  But I also knew, he could really benefit from getting a new computer; with his school work, some new classes he was going to be taking, and being on the homeschool Journalism staff.  So I started looking at different brands and ask on my Facebook page what everyone recommended.  I was hoping all the while some sale would hit and I would be able to afford one.  

  One day I received a text from a sweet lady at church, who has a computer shop, telling me that someone had just traded in a very nice lap top and they would sell it to us for a very reasonable price.  I was just floored!  I was in awe that something others would consider worldly, but we knew had potential to help Derek, God seemed fit to bless him with.  

                                                                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Every year, I have the kids make out Christmas lists and I split it up and hand it out between all our different family members.  This year, Leah's Christmas list said three things:

A Horse

A Halter

A Rural King Gift Card

  Easy enough, right?  Ha!  The child is 8 and she's spunky, but not a take charge kind of person.  She seems to live her in own little world most of the time.   So if we were even to consider getting her a horse, it would need to be dead broke and not skittish around children.  Oh, and then there's this thing of money!  Typically, a decent horse that's broke is expensive and remember we're dealing with the issue of no work...

  So like a responsible adult, I'm just not even considering this horse idea.  I'm trying to coax other ideas out of her and she keeps telling, "Nothing else, I just really want a horse."  I spent half of November and the first 2 weeks of December racking my brain, trying to come up with ideas for this child to open on Christmas morning.  

  One afternoon, some friends of ours, that we don't see very often at all, came over.  The kids all had fun playing and the mother and I spent the morning talking Heart of Dakota and Charlotte Mason books.  We had a wonderful visit. 

  When they were packing up to leave, we had to go to the barn to gather all the children and she commented on how nice our barn was.  She mentioned that Cricket (our current horse) looked like she needed a friend.  She also mentioned they had an older horse too and they were looking for a new home for it!  At first, I just brushed it off, but the more she talked about it, the more I realized this could possibly be the answer to Leah's prayer.  However, the next hurdle was Ronnie.  He's not been excited about having another horse, because we don't have more fence up.  She assured him more fence or not, the horse would be a good one for us and the price was excellent......FREE!  We told her we would talk about it and get back with her.  So I tried to play it low key, but I was super excited about the idea of making Leah's dream come true.  

  By the next day, Ronnie was warming up to the idea and started thinking about how we could make it work.  By the end of the week, we had text them and let them know we wanted the horse.  Ronnie was going a million miles an hour with excitement of how he would surprise Leah with it Christmas morning.  I'll let the video tell the rest of the story...  

I know that this is all just minor in the grand scheme of things.  We look through human eyes and see no way, we even try to come up with back up plans to maybe suffice, but God sometimes has a bigger picture.  

  I heard this song today and I think it sums up my feelings just perfectly.  It's called "Didn't I Walk on the Water", by The Dunaways.  

…...She hears a voice so soft and low  

He says I've moved like that before,

 I'll do this little thing

And I'll oh, I'll give you so much more.

Didn't I walk on the water

And calm the raging sea

I spoke to the wind, 

it hushed and I gave you peace

Didn't I run to your rescue, 

Didn't I hear you when  you called.

I walked right beside you just so you wouldn't fall

Didn't I leave all of heaven just to die for your sins,

Searched until I found you and 

I'd do it all again

A Week Full of Lambs

  If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you can see how busy last week became for us.  For those of you who do not know, our family is very involved in 4-H.  Our kids have shown everything from Poultry, Swine, Dogs, Sheep, and Horses, not to mention all the non-animal projects.  (I hope one day to have a post on how influential 4-H has been in our lives.)  Over the past year, we have made a few changes to our little homestead farm.  We gave all of our chickens away to my best friend and we sent all of our pigs to market.  We've decided to concentrate on the sheep, horses, and dogs.  We currently had 3 ewes (female sheep) left from previous 4-H projects and we bought 1 more ewe and a ram off my other best friend earlier in the year.  We had high hopes of breeding all our own 4-H projects this year!

  I grew up on a sheep farm and felt pretty confident in what I was doing and could teach the kids all about sheep.  I have found, I was gravely mistaken!  My father knew what he was doing and I just participated, evidently.  I have youtubed, googled and read many books, not to mention constantly texted our dear friends and the vet trying to find answers for things I have either forgotten or Daddy had just taken care of on his own.  

  I had a feeling that one ewe was going to lamb early, but I had no idea 3 of them were.  Ronnie and I had worked in the barn the week before last prepping all the pens to be ready to lamb, putting down fresh straw and closing up any holes in the walls and putting some windows in for natural light.  The girls and I went out early last Wednesday morning and fed and watered everything and then headed back inside to start school.  We hadn't even been inside an hour when the excitement started.  Ronnie called and said, "Hurry out here, we've got lambs on the ground!"  So we all came running out and sure enough, our first ewe had twins.  

Then, the next evening the next ewe had another set of twins!  It was quite cold that night so Ronnie immediately got the salamander heater going and a heat lamp hung for them.  

Leah holding one of her lambs, Oliver

  Then on Saturday we had my mom's side of the family Christmas here at our house.  We had a wonderful time visiting with family from Ohio.  It was a busy day and just when everyone was settling in for the evening and getting ready for bed...…...we had another set of twins!!  This time it was a first time "mother" and I was afraid of how she would care for them.  It was super cold again this night and she didn't clean them very well.  The next morning, one of the lambs seemed to be fine walking around but the other was very weak and couldn't seem to stand on its own.  I nutridrenched both of them, hoping that would help, but by evening time I was pretty worried about the weak lamb.  This ewe was Derek's and I really hated to see him lose a lamb this soon.  So I decided to try a bottle.  We gave it a little colostrum and it took the bottle right away, like it was starving.  

Derek and his ewe lamb, Juniper

  The next morning his ears were a little perkier, so I decided to try another bottle and hope it would eventually latch on to its mama.  I kept putting it over to the ewe and it kept trying but just would not latch like its twin.  It downed the bottle again.  Each feeding we would try to latch him on and each time, he just turned away.  So now.....we have a bottle lamb too.  Derek has been doing an amazing job making bottles and making sure he feeds on time and now the lamb has fell in love with Derek.  

Lindsay with her ewe lamb, Pearl

Bottle feeding Grover

  We are now waiting on our last ewe to lamb and hoping for twins out of her as well.  So far we've ended up with 4 ram lambs and 2 ewe lambs.  We had some pretty unfortunate issues with our lambs last year, so we're hoping this year is better.  Overall, we have been very blessed with this lambing season and all the learning we have been doing.  This has been a whole family affair, which is what we strive to do in most everything.  It truly brings me great joy to watch my children with these lambs.  The excitement in their eyes when they see the lambs for the first time is absolutely priceless.

  I know there are some out there that think I'm strange or crazy, and that's ok.  I've made it my life goal to find some kind of blessing in every day.  I'm realizing more and more that life is ever so precious and short.  I pray that one day our children will look back on this season of raising sheep and realize that something so small brought memories that were incredibly great!    

  In having all these lambs during the Christmas season, I am reminded of a few scriptures.  There is something so simplistic of raising sheep.  I wouldn't really call our family shepherds, but I guess we really are.  When you put it in that perspective, it becomes very overwhelming that a family like ours could have been some of those out on that hillside!

Luke 2:8-14 ~

⁸ Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And ^[cbehold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. ¹⁰ Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. ¹¹ For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a ^[d]manger.”

¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill^[e] toward men!”

A Reason for the Season....but how?

How many times have you heard, 

"It's the most wonderful time of the year"

or

Remember the "Reason for the Season"?

  But yet,  we are so quick to overwhelm ourselves with the busyness of the holidays and it quickly becomes the "worst time of the year".  I have been known to say numerous times, I really do not like Christmas anymore!   

We rush around from activity to activity making sure our children or grandchild have the "best holiday experience".  We try to so hard to have the best decorations or the next best light show.  And, if you're like me, you wait until December 15th or later to start your actual Christmas shopping.  (And then I wonder why I'm stressed??)

  In the grand scheme of things, this is absolutely heartbreaking!  Christmas was never ever meant to be about decorations and presents, let alone stress.  It is truly only about Christ's birth, and we've made it into an extreme escapade of worldliness.  (I plan to have a blog post up next week on the history of Christmas, for those of you who love history as much as I do.)

  So without getting on a soapbox and then needing to listen to my own lecture later, what can we do about it?  How can we get back to the basics?  How can we make Christ the center of Christmas again?   I'm hoping to give you a gift basket of ideas today that can give you a plan and a start to a new tradition. 

  Recently, some friends of ours got together with us to discuss this very thing.  My husband and I were completely overwhelmed by the whole thing of Christmas and were ready to throw in the towel and just head off to Tennessee to start a new Christmas tradition.  (Now, let it be known I was hesitant about the idea, but I would never pass up the opportunity to go to Tennessee.  It's where my heart is happy to say the least.)  They gave us all kinds of great ideas that they have done, but one thing stuck out to me.  My friend said, "Now this is not to say this is how we will always do it...."  That was key for me to hear!  (Side note:  I'm a very black and white person.  I like rules.  I like to follow those rules.  …..And the hardest part of my relationship with Christ these last few years has been coming to the realization that everything is not always black and white.  Everything does not have to be the same every. single. year.)  

  Our friends explained that they wanted to change things to make their Christmas more Christ centered.  They started celebrating Epiphany on Jan. 6 to exchange gifts.  (More on this in my history post.)  This left Christmas day open to be celebrated solely as Christ's birth.  Not to mention, more time to buy gifts at a later date and miss the "Christmas rush".  Other ideas included advent stories and Jesse trees (which are included below), having a manger instead of a tree, and watching a "family" Christmas movie every night in December.  

  I loved all of the ideas they shared!  And, mixed with some other ideas on Pinterest, along with some of our special traditions, we were able to come up with a good idea of how to keep Christ in the Center this year.  I hope that these are all an encouragement to you.  Pick one or all or mix and match. Please, share with me your Christmas traditions that are Christ Centered!    

Advent Ideas

Todd Wilson's Family Advent Stories

Jotham's Journey Advent Series

"Our Family Favorite"

Jesse Tree

You can purchase these on Etsy or Amazon.  You can also purchase just the ornaments on Ebay cheaper and then build your own tree.

Kid's Movies

Why do we call it Christmas DVD

The Star Movie

I'm working on a compilation of good clean Christmas movies.  Stay Tuned...

  Last, but not least one of the best ideas we have come across to cut out some of the "Christmas stress", has been to give each child only 3 presents each.  We started this a couple of years ago and it has been so freeing.  Someone once told us, if 3 gifts were good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for our kids!  

For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6