I wish you December days of happy planning.

Of warm kitchens smelling to the very corners of cinnamon and chocolate.

Of hands digging deep into the pockets of warm coats.

Of a Christmas profoundly simple.

Of late afternoon walks that find you bundled up in gloves and hats and scarves…taking time to feel the sting of cold on your cheeks and wondering again at the beauty of bare branches against a blue sky. And if those branches happen to be weighted down with a layer of snow, well so much the better!

I hope you wrap up expensive, expressive presents for the people you love…and spend hardly any money on them. Give of yourself…and all the exquisite “you-ness” of you. Your listening and your understanding and your coming alongside…things that no-one in the world can do just like you can because no-one in the world has been created just like you were.

These are the really extravagant things, anyway. They have life and light and sacrifice attached to them, which of course mirror His gift to us so beautifully.

Tell people of their worth; let them hear what their life means to yours. Slip a white tag and red string around a piece of spruce with words like “You matter to me, Michelle!” Those kinds of gifts change lives, friends.

I don’t need things nearly as much as I need YOU! I don’t want them nearly as much, either. And I bet most people feel exactly the same way.

Sit by the tree or by the light of a candle or two and hold a little kid’s hand. Talk about what it must have been like for those shepherds peeking around a rough stable door that first holy night. When I was little, my mom would let us eat peppernuts by the dozen in a cozy living room lit only by candles and the soft glow of the light in the manger on the mantle.  It was completely magical! When our girls were little, every night in December two blonde headed little beauties would fall asleep by the light of the Christmas tree while we walked pathways in Narnia and took long, never-to-be-forgotten voyages on the Dawn Treader.

Soak in the truth of Emmanuel and let yourself experience the truest form of joy possible…on earth anyway. And all of it because a sweet baby boy grew up and pursued you all the way to a lonely hillside outside Jerusalem; just because you’re you and just because He didn’t want to imagine a future without you in it.

Wrap your head and heart around that, friends. The ever-circling years really will bring round the age of gold.

Oh, my goodness. That’s the essence of Christmas…pure and simple.

And who doesn’t look forward to that?