Merry Christmas!

John and I would just like to take a minute and say Merry Christmas to everyone back in the States. We hope you all take a minute or two or three this holiday season to realized how very blessed you are, how great God is, and what a miracle His Son is for each of us.
To me, Christmas is a time to celebrate the gift Christ's birth and to celebrate the life that I have because of that gift. Christmas is a time of traditions, of love, of showing those around you how much you love them. Many people today say that Christmas is too commercial- and in some ways it is. But to me, Christmas is when I give back. It is a time when I can, if you will, pay forward the blessing that Christ gave me with his birth by loving those around me and loving those that come into my path. So, the aspects of Christmas that can be called commercial- gift buying, the baking, the decorating- are all the ways that I show I care.
So, this Christmas, if you feel like everything is commercial and unfeeling or that everyone has forgotten the true meaning of Christmas, remember that God gave us the gift of His Son not so that we can hold onto it for dear life- but so we can share the gift with everyone.