We all have things we look forward to at the holiday season . . . little traditions that make Christmas unique in each of our homes. Over the next few days on the blog, you’ll hear from each of the pastors at Terra Nova about those traditions that make Christmas special for us and our families.  We’ll start with Phil Taylor . . .

What makes Christmas unique in the Taylor house?

I’m a big fan of Christmas decorations, lights, trees, all of it. Aimee does an amazing job of making our house look great. A few years ago, she painted an advent calendar tree on a canvas and rigged up a system with magnets so that each day the kids place another decorated magnet on the canvas. It’s pretty cool, and I keep trying to convince her to let me market them and sell them on Ebay or something. Lot’s of kids have advent calendars that spew candy or something, but very few have a home made advent calendar made by their mom. So this is definitely a highlight of the Taylor home Christmas. 

 

When Aimee and I got married over 10 years ago, Aimee gave me a new Christmas stocking that she made (are you sensing the theme here?). We felt like as we were creating a new home together, the stockings our parents gave us as kids needed to be put away so that we could create our own traditions. There was no way I was going to sew her a stocking like she had done for me. It would take me years, and would look like crap. So instead, I went to the mall and found the nicest classic looking stocking I could find and then raided the house looking for interesting buttons that I could sew onto it. The idea was that I would sew a button on for each Christmas we had been together. So each year, after we have finished decorating the house, I sit down with her stocking and sew another button on. It’s the only sewing I do all year long, and I normally forget how to thread a needle, but after 10 married years a few years of dating before that, this stocking is starting to fill up and as I look at all those buttons I feel like it is a tangible picture of many great years together. It’s definitely one the biggest things I look forward to at Christmas. 

One more thing that I think is pretty unique in the Taylor household . . . lots of people set up a manger scene somewhere in their house at Christmas, but at our house Mary is pregnant until Christmas Day. During the night pregnant Mary is mysteriously replaced with not-pregnant Mary and baby Jesus. I’ve never met anyone who does this.