Christmas

I am so excited about Christmas this year. I haven't spent Christmas day with my parents in almost 8 years and I am so glad to be here this year. We are having a great time planning our meals and doing our shopping (thanks to the sale of one of our cars-PTL!), and the girls are doing great not trying to open all of the presents under the tree. We are , as are most parents, really trying to balance the real (Christ) with the imaginary (santa). The only way I could do that in my head was to make the one, Santa, just imaginary. I am sure I am some kind of terrible parent for not "doing Santa", but I just couldn't.  We have absolutely gone to see Santa and we love watching all of the movies and things, but I guess I just had trouble mixing a true story with a made up one. I know, weird....but somewhere it just bothered me. The good thing is that we are able to speak openly about shopping and gifts and not work overtime hiding all of the gifts until the 25th. We wrap and we put out! I hope that as the girls get older we can really focus, starting on Christmas eve,  getting ready for the celebration of Christ's birth and maybe even open our gifts after we do our dinner and a cake. Like a real party for Him, but we give the gifts as an expression of our love for one another and in light of what Christ has done for us.  I love gifts, I love getting gifts and I love buying for my girls, so I am not against the gifts, per se, only that we don't focus so much on them. I think I would be okay with Santa if he weren't infringing on a Holy day for us as believers.  Just my opinion-and you know what they say about opinions......