The last week I have been cooking. Yes, it’s not too often that I cook full meals, after all, it’s only the three of us at home. One thing I cooked this weekend was some apples. They were good gala apples when I first bought them. Crisp, thin skin, fragrant. Well we ate quite a few of them but they had past their prime. I decided to just cut them up and put them into a sauce pan with lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon. Wow, our house smelled like the holidays! This morning, I cut up some cheep round roast and put it into the crock pot to simmer all day with some broth and tomato paste. When I got home, the whole house smelled like happiness and Greg was right there making a sauce from the drippings! Inspired! I definitely associate, pine, pumpkin and cinnamon with Christmas and I love the way those smells make me feel inside.
I was thinking about Christmas a lot this week. Have you ever heard of 'Kris Kringling'? We learned about it at Marriage Encounter. The idea is that you visit the houses of people you care about and leave them little gifts without telling them it’s from you. You get to become 'Kris Kringle'. Greg, the kids and I loved playing Kris Kringle. We would fill a gift bag with chocolate pretzels and a card with a Christmas Carol or scripture on it and drive by. Then in stealth mode we would send a kid up to the door with the gift. The idea was to ring the bell and run back to the car and drive away. (Most the time the kid wasn't even in the door and we would be driving away...hah haa!) Of course we would circle back and see if the gift had been received. How much heart-pounding fun that was! Even better, than that...we did it to a couple of houses in our neighborhood of people we didn't even know. For me, as a mother, doing that is the ultimate demonstration of unconditional love. I expect nothing in return (they can't return the favor) and I teach that to my kids and I hope their hearts are changed for it. We usually would spend part of our 'Kringling' night driving around a bit and looking at the lights on the houses in our part of town while listening to 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'. These memories are such treasures. I think I need to put on my Kris Kringle hat right now! Join me won't you?
