It’s holiday time! While for many people their usual Christmas routines are being interrupted this year, for us everything was going to be new anyway. Most of our routines are based on our life in Malaysia. For instance, the school year there runs from January to November, so December is the heart of summer break. That meant that we always took family vacation around December 15. This year we will be figuring out new routines, how to decorate the new house, and creating so many other traditions. I know that for many it is hard to let go of some long-held family traditions for the season, but it can also be exciting to try out some new ones.
We do have a few traditions that we will be keeping this year. One is listening to Christmas music: for me personally I start listening to non-religious winter songs on the first Sunday of Advent. I add in contemporary recordings of Christmas carols and Christmas songs in mid-December, but hold back on a few that are particularly devotionally special for me until the actual season of Christmas. For me breaking it up in stages helps bridge the cultural ways of celebrating Christmas with the deeper Christian rhythms of the liturgical seasons. The other part of our holiday celebration is that it is birthday season in the Trozzo household. Wendolyn’s birthday is December 22 and mine is January 1. We try to keep those celebrations separate from other holiday festivities, and I suspect that will be easier this year since it will be harder to go out. I hope you find ways to mix holding onto meaningful traditions and forging new ones this year, just as we are hoping to do.
—Pastor Eric