Christmas Thoughts

I finally bought a new tree this year—the kind that comes in three sections and all you have to do is to connect them and the branches just sort of fall into place—and I love it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have quite enough garland to make it all the way to the bottom, but that’s probably a good thing since my cat, Midnight, loves to chew on it.

Here’s picture of the new tree (notice Midnight hunkering underneath it—just waiting for me to turn my back):

As a single guy, I’ve always considered putting up a Christmas tree as an act of defiance against the part of me that would prefer to wait until I could really “start living” (read: marriage). But I just won’t give in to that voice—partially because I don’t believe a person has to be married to “live,” and partially because if I gave into to it once, I’d be prone to do it many other times and I don’t think I’d like the result.

Besides, I love Christmas. I wrote a post last year in which I explained how I buy one new ornament each year as a way to commemorate whatever happened in my life each particular year. This year, I bought this ornament:

Yeah, it looks a lot like Midnight:

Nothing special happened with her this year, except that maybe I grew even more attached to her than ever before. That was enough to buy an ornament in her likeness. We have an entire daily routine worked out and I'd lost without her.

And today is when people who purchased a copy of my Christmas devotional book, The Experience of Christmas, will hopefully begin reading it. The book has a reading for each day in December and I just love the idea of playing a small part in bringing families together to celebrate Christmas.

Have a great weekend everybody!