Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all! I hope that everybody is doing well this holiday.

For some of this, this year has been a difficult one. I know people who are in the middle of divorce, trying to save their marriage from divorce, have lost loved ones this year, and have lost their jobs in the past couple of weeks (we happen to be one of the latter). But no matter who you are, and especially if you have the resources to read this message, we can all be thankful for this day.

I'm very lucky to have a great family. While some of my extended family might bicker, and perhaps this might even keep some of them away from family gatherings this year, I have great parents that are generous with gifts. My kids will wake up to some nice surprises tomorrow, even though I only spent $5 on gifts for the entire family this year.

But I really did get a lot for that $5. I love to talk about my sweet deals and bargains, so this is what I got. For $5, I managed to get...

A bath toy for my ds (a boat that floats around in the water)
A "My Mommy's Tote" book/toy for ds
A "Phonics 4 Babies" DVD for ds
A Cootie game for dd
A dot-to-dot book with CD-ROM for dd
2 AMC Movie passes for dh

I bought the AMC Movie Passes with Coke Rewards Points, bought the bath toy, dot-to-dots, and Cootie game with Toys R Us bucks from the McDonald's Monopoly game (and the $5 that I spent), and I won the My Mommy's Tote and Phonics 4 Babies DVD. Not too bad!

There will be kids that don't have generous grandparents, that don't have parents that can magically turn $5 into $68 worth of gifts, that won't have very much this year. Some people might wake up without much food to eat. While that is a shame, they also have something to be thankful for this Christmas season.

No matter what your circumstance, there is one thing that all people can remember and be thankful for. The reason that we have Christmas in the first place. The little baby that was born... not really on December 25th, but we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ on this day. His birth was special not only because he was God, but because of what he did for us.

It would be a shame for someone to celebrate Christmas without knowing why the baby Jesus came to this Earth. He came because none of us are perfect. We've all lied. Even my toddler knows how to lie. We've all stolen, taken things that don't belong to us. We've all had a burning, passionate anger towards someone... God sees that sort of hatred towards another person as murder... we're all murderers at heart. So many of us have taken the Lord's name in vain, and that is offensive to God. We've all fallen short of God's high standards... every one of those shortcomings I listed above, those bad things, is sin. A person who has even one sin on their record can not go to Heaven, but must go to a place of eternal torment called hell.

But the good news of Christmas day, is that 2007 or so years ago, Jesus came to this Earth to give us hope. He came to live just like we did, in order to die a horrific death so that our sins could be forgiven, and we would have the hope of one day entering Heaven... if we only ask for forgiveness and repent (or turn away from) our sins.

Everyone, no matter how good or bad this holiday season has been, can have this hope. That is one thing we can all be thankful for on this very special day of the year.

Merry Christmas!