it's Christmas time

And then Indy handed me an old Christmas photo album that had a story of its own and we began looking through it together....

We’re decorating for Christmas.

This morning, I got the tubs down out of the barn and Rebecca’s been going through them. Hanging wreaths and stockings, putting batteries in twinkly string lights and making the little bunkhouse here on the farm that we’ve been staying in for the last eight months (I’ll save that story for a different time) feel warm and festive.

We got home from Texas late last night, and since then, Indy has been running a high fever and fighting a pretty bad cold. She slept most of the day away, but this evening as the decorations started coming out and the carols came on, she made her way to the couch in the living room to be part of the fun.

Pretty soon, she and I were cuddled on the couch, surrounded by all the children’s Christmas books we’ve gathered through the years, with Papa reading one after another to her. Then she handed me an old Christmas photo album that had a story of its own and we began looking through it together.

It’s not actually a family album, or at least it wasn't until October of 2011 when Joey put it together for a music video we were shooting. We’d recently recorded a Christmas album and I’d had the idea of filming a music video at home in the farmhouse beside the Christmas tree…looking back on Christmas’s and other sweet moments together from the past.

The album was going to be coming out just before Christmas that year, and so we had to decorate the house for Christmas to shoot the music video (and soon after a full Christmas tv special) in the Fall, while everyone else around us were getting ready for Halloween.

And so like this evening, we got out our Christmas tubs and began decorating the farmhouse. When it was done, Joey hurriedly made a makeshift Christmas photo album, filled with lots of sweet pictures that we could look at together while our bus driver Russell’s good friend PH, who was a cinematographer, pointed his video camera our way and we sang along as the music played.

I’d written the song a couple of months before - an acoustic, story song celebrating the hustle and bustle and ups and downs of the holiday season. And to remind us what Christmas is really all about.

As Indy and I thumbed through the old pictures, I shared with her, not only those memories, but the memory of more than a dozen years ago, when her Mama and I first looked through that album together...

So many Christmas’s have come and gone since then. Many of them awash in painful tears and many more of them, with joyful ones.

I love that Indy can see all the old pictures and even videos like this one, but I can’t help but wish that Joey could somehow see Indy now, so beautiful and growing up to be such a sweet, kind young lady. She would be so proud of her.

It’s late now and Indiana’s long had her bath and is sleeping soundly again. Her fever has subsided and she’s feeling somewhat better. Rebecca’s finishing putting the final touches on the mantle and we’re about ready to call it a night too.

It IS Christmas time and we’re excited about it.

This is going to be a different kind of Christmas for us this year. We’re changing some things up… taking a few things away that we used to do and have, and bringing some new traditions in for Christmas this year. It will be a simpler and smaller holiday for us, focused less on presents and more on His presence being here with us. Less on giving gifts and more on the gift of giving. But I think it’s going to most meaningful Christmas we’re ever had.

PS: if you haven’t read my blog post with a similar name Christmas Time from last year around this time, it’s a pretty neat story too, worth checking out too.