For all my excitement about decorating for Christmas this year, it sure was a long time in coming. I wanted to wait until after Thanksgiving to do it, but we were sick over Thanksgiving. Then suddenly every nook and cranny of the house needed to be cleaned, both as part of my fall cleaning (which always seems to stretch into winter cleaning) and also in preparation for our Christmas company (some of which is coming this weekend and some of which is coming next weekend), and somewhere amid the dusting and the scrubbing and the happily filling of Goodwill boxes, the decorating just fell by the wayside.

If you managed to get through that entire extraordinarily long and clumsy sentence, here’s what got my Christmas decorating finally back on track.A cheap little poinsettia from Waremart. My mom almost always has a poinsettia at Christmas, and since it’s such a cheery, decorative flower in and of itself, I usually can’t resist getting one either.

It sat happily on my little coffee table for days on end, and the boys did very well at leaving it alone. Then Sebastian came along doing what he does best . . . digging with his excavator . . . and a very sad and broken poinsettia was left in his wake.

I almost cried. I’d been so happy to find such a pretty one for such a good price, and now the biggest flower on it was drooped way over.

Pickle fork and twist-tie to the rescue.Turns out broken flowers, pulled-on lights, and thrown Christmas ornaments are just another piece of the puzzle when it comes to Christmas decorating with two rowdy little boys . . .

Thankfully, I don’t have a lot of Christmas knickknacks; my decorating usually consists of fresh-cut greenery and lots of candles and lights. Turns out that’s right down my oldest son’s alley, too. I’ve always enjoyed decorating for Christmas, but there’s something even more special and fun about it when you know an excited little boy will come running down the hall after naptime to exclaim over the newly hung lights. “Oh, thank you, Mom!” Maybe that’s why I couldn’t resist getting him a multi-colored string of Christmas lights all his own this year. I hung them in his room while he was busy elsewhere, and when he walked in, he literally went and just stared at them for a while. He was overjoyed.A few weeks ago, my friend Hope posted a picture of her beautifully lit-up home and said something along the lines of all the lights at Christmas reminding her that Jesus is the Light of the world. I loved that, and that’s what I tell my boys.

Jesus, that tiny baby in the manger. Jesus, the Light of a dark, dark world.

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." (Isaiah 9:2)

In the middle of the pretties and the goodies, I try to keep reminding my boys of that Light coming down to earth as a tiny baby. I want them to know that even without all the extras, Christmas is still incredibly special.

When God came down to us.Our Luke 2 memorization has had us thinking about Christmas for at least a month already, and it was so much fun to finally start making the house look Christmas-y as well.We got our Christmas tree, and while I thought the decorating of that would be fairly straight-forward and stress-free, it was rather the opposite. The original decorations were very dissatisfying, to the parents at least. 🙂 Sebastian was throwing ornaments in the kitchen, and Alec just couldn’t keep his hands off anything and everything. I don’t know how many times I said, “I want you to enjoy Christmas, but there’s parts of Christmas that are just for looking at, not for touching.” I told him that the Christmas cookies are for eating, and the Christmas gifts are for touching, but the Christmas lights and decorations are just for pretty and that they won’t stay pretty if we play with them.

With the wonderful, calm help of Eric, it finally got done, and the boys were in awe. They were originally in awe that we would bring a whole tree in the house, but they quickly forgot about that part of it once they saw all the lights on it. 🙂I felt bad that the first part of Christmas preparation was the part the boys couldn’t actually do anything with, so we made Christmas cookies soon after that. And that was actually more idyllic than I thought it would be.

Especially this moment. The big brother holding the bowl so the little brother could stir the batter. The sweetest little happy smiles.The dough mixing went marvelously. So did the cutting out, surprisingly enough. I won't lie though, I did breathe a sigh of relief when Sebastian cut out just one or two cookies and then announced that he was going to play with his stuff. Go right ahead, funny little boy. Toward the end, while I was busy getting cookies in and out of the oven and off the pans, Alec very busily cut out the last ten or so cookies all by himself! He was so careful, and so sweet, and just so grown-up. The cookie frosting and sprinkling turned out to be the very worst part of all. The boys loved it; Eric and I literally kept trading jobs just to try to keep our sanity till every last cookie was doused in sugar and sprinkles. First I would ice, and he would direct little hands, and then we would switch, and all the while the counter just kept looking more and more like a sugar apocalypse had hit it. I'll spare you a picture of that. It really was just plain disgusting. Even Eric went a little crazy, which is saying something. 🙂

Here's a sweet moment before we knew what we were getting into. And of course this time around there was no announcement by Sebastian that he wouldn't be helping. No, he stayed the entire time, swiping wet fingers through the sprinkles on the counter until . . . well, like I said, sugar apocalypse.The boys and I made three different kinds of Christmas cookies this year. Sugar cookie cut-outs with icing and sprinkles. Molasses cookies drizzled in white chocolate and sprinkled with candy cane. Peanut blossom cookies. The sugar cookies were by far the most eventful. And unfortunately, my and the boys' favorite as well. I see year after year of Christmas excitement clouded by impending sugar cookie chaos.We took cookie plates to our neighbors on Sunday. It was actually more fun and eventful than I thought it’d be. The first neighbor we delivered a plate to happens to also be one of our employees, and while we gave him a plate of Christmas cheer, he gave Eric the news that he’d hurt his wrist playing with his kids and wouldn’t be able to come to work for a few days. What a trade. 🙂 But really, it is good to see another dad investing in his children.

The second plate went to a bunch of bright-eyed boys playing hide-and-seek in their garage. Eric warned them that they’d better not eat all the cookies before their parents got home, but I’m a bit dubious they didn’t. While it would’ve been nice to see the parents, it was also really good to see a bunch of little boys being active and imaginative even while their parents weren’t home to enforce any screen time boundaries.

The third plate went to our sweet, old Mexican neighbor lady. She’s always showing up on our porch at random times, bearing gifts and asking about the boys. Sebastian was terrified of her for over a year, but the last time or two that she came, he ran straight to her and let her hold him. Anyway, this time he was sleeping in the car, but we gave her the cookies, and she very excitedly invited us inside so Alec could see all her Christmas decorations and lights. He was quite properly interested, and she gave him a little figurine from her massive collection. He also got to pick one for the sleeping Sebastian. She tried to give him a Santa, but Alec has been scared of Santa ever since we moved into this house and there was a massive one standing in the utility room. Lo and behold though, he was perfectly alright with a little Santa in a snow globe for himself. “I like little Santas,” he said.

And then we had one last stop, but we were temporarily foiled in our drive to get there by a broken-down old camper blocking the road. Two of our neighbors have a bit of a feud going on, which is at times humorous and at times understandable. We’re not sure who was blocking who from the main road access, but it blocked our way as well, and when we went around the other way, there was a poor delivery driver stopped in front of a massive puddle looking a little perplexed. Eric told her how to go around the other way and that there was a camper blocking the other end even if she did manage to get her van through all the deep puddles. “Can’t I walk?” she asked. Eric convinced her to go around.

We finally delivered our last plate to another sweet old neighbor lady that we rarely see but that always has a smile for us when we deliver Christmas cookies. Alec told her he’d helped make the cookies, and she said, “Of course you did!”

There's one more part of Christmas that the boys are so excited about. And their mother maybe even more so, if I'm being honest. And that's the gift-giving. Sometimes I tell Alec that we give gifts at Christmas to show people we love them; sometimes I tell him we do it to remember that God gave us the best gift of all, Jesus.

But when it comes right down to it, the fact of the matter is that there's something unknown wrapped in pretty paper, and the excitement of that doesn't need explaining. 🙂

Alec likes gifts whether they're for him or not, and even whether they're a surprise or not. Always wanting to be doing what his mom is doing, he asked me to help him wrap up a bunch of his special little things. He didn't plan to give them away or even open them right away; he just wanted a little pile of gifts all his own, to do whatever he wanted with. He was so happy. He and Sebastian had great fun unwrapping them all just this morning, and then he was back begging for more tape and more paper so he could wrap them up again. And speaking of gifts . . . I can't help but think of the incredible gift God gave to quite a few families today. Just yesterday, I had prayed specifically that God would allow the captives in Haiti to be freed by Christmas.

What a gift.

And what a reminder to pray for the Light of the world to shine into that dark place and into those dark hearts that could do the kidnapping in the first place. May Jesus continue to redeem and save even there.

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light . . ."