I made my wishes firmly known: No fussing this Christmas. Last year, the whole house was decorated top to bottom with lit Christmas houses and not one but two gigantic real trees reaching all the way up to the high ceilings and garland and little elves or trolls in every possible corner. It was a winter wonderland. This year was going to be different: A Charlie Brown Christmas tree and a wreath. Nothing more. "Bah humbug," people told me, calling me "Scrooge" or the "Grinch." I said I'd much rather be Scrooge than pick up old pine needles all year. Sure enough, I had a houseful of people over one night. They begged to put them up. "No," I said. Soon, everything was up. Why all the fuss? Why do we carry on these traditions at Christmas? There is something about it that helps the meaning of Christmas blossom. I used to go with a family from church to the St. Lucia Fest where the children sing all the old Swedish songs for Christmas. Little girls would wear candles on their heads in a crown. In my home church, we sang Silent Night in Norwegian every year. It didn't matter that most of us had no idea what we were saying ñ there was something happening in the room. The poinsettias we see everywhere date back a Christmas tradition in Mexico. In my church in Milwaukee, the big Christmas tradition was the annual Meatball Supper. It had originally been a Lutefisk supper until one year the Germans who, after a while, outnumbered the Scandinavians, voted at the annual meeting to abolish the lutefisk and change the menu to meatballs. People quit the church over it. Why, every year, do we so slavishly do the same things all over again ñ the trees and the decorations and the gifts and the food and everything else that the Grinch tried to steal out of Who-ville? Because they bring us back to who we used to be. Celebrating the child in the manger brings out the child in each of us. It was Jesus said that if you wish to receive the kingdom of heaven, you need to do so as a child. "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus Ö And Mary brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger." I can remember my grandfather's voice reading the story. You've heard that story since you were a toddler but it still moves you. And I'm guessing this Christmas, it will still move your heart again. It will mine ñ Scrooge tendencies and all. Andy Romstad can be reached at AJR@cambridgelutheran.org ©Isanti County News
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