My wife asked me a few days before Christmas what would make it special. Besides the gifts and hoopla that comes with this holiday what would make it feel like Christmas. That is a weird question for me because all my good memories were as a child when Santa was a real person and it still had a mystic. About the time I learned Santa wasn’t real and I learned my parents love for each other wasn’t real either. So around the age of ten I lost Santa and my dad to divorce – Christmas hasn’t been the same since. Oh, I hate divorce, too.

When I got married I had the chance to start something new and this year was Tatum’s first Christmas. So we started new traditions or adopted old ones. I think I actually have new memories for Christmas. We didn’t do anything super strange – exchanged pjs, bought a tree ornament, and remembered the nativity story. But the gifts meant less this year and the reason (giving to others, spending time with family, stopping to remember) meant more.

Oh, I got a couple of good books which will probably show up in blogs in 2008 and I got a new Bible. That may seems strange since I have many types of Bibles but I got a personal reading, study, growing Bible in the ESV verison.