I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays, and a 2026 filled with growth and healing even in the midst of what may sometimes be a mess. I also wanted to thank you for reading my thoughts and so often responding. I cherish our conversations.
My hopes for us in 2026 are simple but not easy:
- A closer growing friendship with God.
- A dynamic, adventurous spiritual life.
- Faith that lives daily as trust.
- Prayers that go beyond a grocery list, that are soul deep.
- An insight into who God created you to be.
In my letters to you next year, I’ll focus on these ideas. Is there anything specific you would like to dig into? Please shoot me an email and let’s discuss it.
I also thought you might enjoy some thoughts on the importance of tradition and a Christmas prayer.
Tradition Embodies Life
God created us with the intellectual and emotional capacity to receive and develop customs, rituals, and habits that ask and answer questions about the past, paint the present with a deeper hue, and promise continuity with the future. I don’t remember our first tramp up into the mountains to cut our own Christmas tree. Isn’t that the way it is with traditions? Suddenly, there they stand, decorated with memories and meaning, longing and laughter. We gather round them, be they Christmas trees, turkey dinners, movie viewing, or whatever your traditions are. They’re a glue that binds us one to another and to God.
But that first Christmas tree hunt quickly became a tradition. Maybe because it connected us with our love for nature, it allowed for time together with a purpose, but no clock demanding obedience. Now, many of our family Christmas stories contain a funny or poignant Christmas tree tale.
For example, the Christmas I could not walk and needed back surgery, Dee Dee and my oldest daughter, Katie, bought a tree, and it kept sliding off the roof of the van on the way home. Or when we waited until Christmas Eve, once again because of health issues, and the tree farm was closed, and so were all the tree lots. We finally found a sign saying “lot closed,” “free trees.” We took two trees and called them grace trees. Or the year we took our youngest daughter, Emmy’s college friends from Central Amarica snow shoeing to help us find a tree. They had never seen snow.
Last year, Dee Dee and I were skunked. Though we scoured the mountains west of our home, an area called South Park (yes, of the weird TV show), and found a great sandwich shop in Fairplay, we bagged no Christmas tree. So, this year, we’ll gather around a gorgeous fake tree with a delightfully crooked star on top. Will wonders (horrors?) never cease?
Traditions develop as each of these stories carry their own weight, lessons of provision, grace, resilience, and hospitality, but also the truth that daily life has deeper meaning than we often grant it.
Some traditions we can’t remember their beginnings. Christmas, we know. Dissatisfied with the relational distance between Parent and children, Jesus Incarnated to pave the way for us to draw close to our Creator once again. Now we celebrate that core sacred tradition through ordinary events, meals, prayers, movies, gifts, and friends that God makes holy.
Thanks for being a friend, for being an ordinary means of God decorating my life with beauty. May you have a holy Christmas and many holy-days full of things sacred and ordinary that pull us all closer to the center of one another and God.
Love, Eugene
God of Christmas and all things new:
Give us true hope and lasting,
Even from the temporary glitter, lights, and songs.
Provide travel protection,
Showing Yourself everlasting,
Even in the movement of clouds, road markers, and mile signs.
Help us prepare,
Guest beds, clean warm homes, wonder-bound packages,
Delicious meals and joyous decoration,
But also prepare our minds and hearts.
Clean them of hurt, fear, and jealousy.
Fill them with forgiveness, grace, and wonder.
Feed our souls
With light and delight, and relationships
With You and family and friends.
This Christmas and in the year coming
Allow us to give ourselves and others the greatest gift of all:
Christ alive in us.
Amen
Here are a couple of Sunday Psalms for you as well:
Christmas Eve Psalm: A Prayer for Christ to Light Our Lives with Love or How to Pray in the New Year: A With-God Psalm
Amen, just Amen.
Shalom,
Lynne