Christmas...or a pagan holiday

First off, I'm not taking anyone's side in this. One of my favorite verses in the bible tells us that we must be convinced in our own minds with regard to our beliefs.  That doesn't mean we justify what we want to do by saying "Well, I believe...." and then go about acting any way we want. It means we are to search things out, pray about them, and ask others to get opposing viewpoints; just make sure they can biblically justify their position and aren't following someone else blindly or justifying their own selfishness.

With regard to Christmas, these are things I've used to help me decide about it.
1)There is (obviously) nothing whatsoever in the bible about it, so you have to draw your own conclusions about it using prayer and common sense.
2)Try not to use irrelevant bible verses to justify beliefs about it - as I've said the bible doesn't say anything directly about Christmas, so verses such as Jer.10:2-4, which is often used by people as an argument against Christmas trees, aren't relevant. Jeremiah was not referring to a Christmas tree; this verse seems to be describing a gilded statue, and even at that the bible tells us not to be afraid of them because they (the object) can't do evil or good.
3)As far as people saying it was originally a pagan holiday and that's why we shouldn't observe it, well, the days of the week are named after pagan gods and we don't have a conniption fit about that. Several months also derive their names from pagan gods. There is way more out there that originally came about through some pagan holiday or custom than we can imagine and if we spend a huge chunk of our time fretting about all of it we are really missing the point of living a faith filled life.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think you can go about doing as you please, or putting yourself in questionable situations and claim you have the faith to see you through it, I'm just saying you shouldn't go looking for problems. Paul tells us this in ICor 10:27 where he told the believers that they could eat with unbelievers if they were asked to, that they just shouldn't ask whether or not the food had been sacrificed to idols. You could eat the unclean food as long as your conscience was clear because you didn't know it was unclean; the food was not the issue.

I don't see any problem with observing Christmas. I don't worship any pagan gods, so in my opinion it doesn't matter if I'm doing something on the same day someone else is worshiping a pagan god. For all I know one of my kids may have a birthday on one of the pagan holidays, but just because I'm celebrating that day, doesn't mean I'm celebrating that god.
I do think you should consider other people's beliefs. If you know of someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, don't invite them to your Christmas party. This would certainly fall under Romans 14, but it's also just common decency.
One final thought. Even if you're not worshiping a pagan God, you have only Christmas hymns playing all throughout December, and you attend all the church Christmas programs you can possibly get to, you can still be rolling about in sin with regard to the holiday. If you are so wrapped up in it that you turn the holiday itself into an idol then you are in sin with regard to it. We are all human and tempted to get wrapped up in that kind of stuff because of all the pressure society puts on people, especially at this time of the year. I've missed the point before, but I've also been completely ready to chunk it all on a year when several of my children were sick and one had just had surgery. My focus at that point had to be my children and not the holiday. For the record, we did still have our Christmas dinner that year, but my mom and aunt were responsible for it instead of me. They brought Christmas to our house and stayed to clean up the mess.

More of Ri's Sewing

Although she would disagree, Ri's sewing is coming along quite well.  These are the last two things she was sewing for the two little girls at our church.

It's kind of hard to tell from the photo, but these are tiered skirts. She has made several A-line skirts, so I figured she could use practice with a different style.

Her next projects are a couple of dresses for herself. We found a really cute pattern she wants to use to make a special dress for a photo she wants to have taken, but we always need to alter dress patterns quite a bit for her. She'll be making a "test dress" first, out of a less expensive cut of fabric (one we already had on hand), just to work out any little quirks in the alterations we make before cutting into the really nice fabric. I showed her the alterations that would need to be made for the pattern and we cut out the test dress last night. I can't wait to see how it turns out because I really thought the fabric she chose for the test dress was cute too.

One year and a week ago…

…I had my whole life planned out. I was going to graduate in the beginning of spring, going to get my driving permit, going to start online school for photography and start online college for theology.                

One year and a week ago I wanted to be a photographer and travel the world.

One year and a week ago I couldn’t be less worried about getting married and having a family. Maybe one day, but certainly not anytime in the near future. And whoever I married, his last name would not start with an “M” because my initials are MMD and nothing was worse to me than the idea of having MMM for initials.

One year and a week ago I met an old family friend and was chatting with her. She asked me about my plans and I explained all of the above to her (probably not in that order though). She asked me if I had a boy friend to which I replied “goodness no! I don’t have time for a boy friend and I really don’t want one either”.

One year and a week ago Superman (interesting name, no?) texted me and asked me if I liked him after a bit of small talk. I freaked out. I was only 17, I didn’t need a boy friend, I didn’t want a boy friend. A boy friend meant courting, courting meant getting married, getting married meant that all my plans would go BOOM. I didn’t want my plans to go BOOM, I worked hard on them. I didn’t want to see them go to waste. But I had one possible out. My family did the courting thing, he dated. There was no way he’d be interested after I explained it to him. He was Superman and he belonged with Lois Lane, which I most certainly was not! So one year and a week ago I began explaining  courtship to a normal, public schooled, dating, albeit cute, guy who had no clue what it was. I did everything possible to scare him away. “It leads to marriage”, “You can’t go in to it lightly”, “You do know that this is to look for a spouse, not just casual dating, right?”. I brought up marriage and life-long commitment as much as I possibly could. I knew if anything would scare him away, that would (he told me later that it nearly did), Well, needless to say it didn’t scare him away. He just kept saying “Ok, I get it. So, do you like me?” to which I would respond “This isn’t just about liking. It’s more, do you think we could get along well enough to get married?” to which he’d respond “yes, I understand that, but do you like me?” and so on and so forth all day long until I finally gave in and answered him that I liked him enough to give it a try. I didn’t have a crush on him, I didn’t “like-like” him, but he was (still is) a good friend and we got along well, so why not?

One year ago yesterday Superman asked dad if he could court me and one year ago yesterday dad said yes. I’m so glad because now all my plans have completely changed. I want to get married, I want to be a house-wife/stay-at-home mom more than anything ever. And I’m even willing to marry Superman although his last name starts with a “M” (I can’t convince him to change it, he apparently likes his last name. I gotta admit, I like it too!).

Yesterday Superman and I have been together 1 year and it’s been great. It doesn’t seem like it’s been a year since we had that talk over text, but it has been! And I am very glad that I didn’t scare him away.

Your very happy, 

It's December 4th...

...and it's snowing. It was unusual for it to snow the week before Christmas last year. This is highly unusual.
We didn't have our first hard frost until late in the season. We were still getting tomatoes well into November. But it turned off very cold a few days ago and now it's snowing. I'm glad the gas tank for the fireplace is full.

I'm in the home stretch now!

It's been a bit since I've posted, but I've been on a mission. I tried my best to relax after our really big Thanksgiving dinner (the one we had on the Sat. before) and just enjoy the two dinners I had on Thanksgiving Day (with Superman's family) and on Black Friday (with my Dad), and I did.  I didn't have to cook at all for the dinner Superman's mom invited us to, and I only had to cook up a batch of chicken and dumplings for my Dad, so both of the dinners were pretty low key, but then I set my sights on getting my Christmas shopping done early. I decided that I wanted to do my best this year to not be frenzied throughout December. I want to be able to slow things way down, focus on the truly important things, and spend a bunch of quality time with my family.  I was determined to get all my shopping done this week, and I've almost finished. I just need to buy some candy; a little for the girls' stockings and some for the gingerbread house (or whatever - last year it was a gingerbread train), and I also have to get a gift for my Dad. Then that's it - I'm done! I'm truly thankful for online shopping (I used this method for about 1/4 of my shopping this year), but it didn't save me from "The Mall" - ugh (wish I knew how to put that in some kind of Halloween type, creepy font). At least I don't have to do that again anytime soon. I plan on wrapping a few presents at a time for several days in order to get them all done and ready to go under the tree once we get one up. One of the things I'm looking forward to the most this year is joining in with the girls on the night they watch movies and string popcorn. I haven't done that with them in several years. I can't wait!