George didn’t want to wear his reindeer antlers tonight. Or his jingle bell collar. Or even lie in front of the Christmas tree long enough for me to get the perfect Christmas portrait of his scruffy little face. This will have to do.
That’s okay though. We’ve already had a very merry Christmas, filled with more blessings that I can tick off in one blog post — but just to name a few:

Bravissima is doing marvelously, letting us pick up her feet and supporting herself on just three legs for the first time in months. I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas gift than a horse that is in good spirits, and seemingly feeling better.

Our family is healthy, and happy. Life might not always be exactly as we would plan it ourselves, but it is wonderful, and it is as God wants it for us. That is good enough.

We have so few real worries. When our biggest concern is whether we’ll get the house tidied in time for our impending guests, it means we need to really stop and reflect on how blessed we are.

This has been a truly rewarding year professionally, and 2012 is shaping up to be even more amazing.

An hour ago, we were celebrating Christ’s birth with our church family, glowing candles in one hand, hymn books open to “Silent Night” in the other. If “magical” didn’t seem like an inappropriate word to describe a religious gathering, “magical” is the word I’d choose to sum up the candlelight service.

And now we are home — just Danny, George, and me. The number of presents I have left to wrap can be counted on one hand, and my baking for tomorrow was completed this afternoon. Now it’s just time to relax, to savor Christmas with a mug of hot cider, and to reflect on the real meaning and significance of this holiday. We don’t celebrate Christmas because of Santa Claus or presents or even the opportunity to get together with family. We don’t celebrate it because Jesus was born on this day — because He almost certainly wasn’t. But we celebrate it because it is the time our society has chosen to remember that a baby was born into a manger, with shepherds and a donkey there to welcome him into the world instead of a midwife, and that thirty-three years later he died, with torture and jeers following him into death instead of honor. But he rose three days later, the world’s sins conquered along with His death: As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”. That is my favorite, favorite verse. And that is why the manger and the cross were worth it in the end, and why Christmas is truly worth celebrating.

It is exactly as Longfellow wrote it in “Christmas Bells,” the poem that became one of my favorite carols, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Even — or perhaps especially — when everything in this world seems wrong, there is so much hope in Christmas. So much promise wrapped up in an infant’s swaddling cloths.

“And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Merry Christmas.

~ Laura