Christ-birth-Celebration

Well here goes.  Controversy.  Not Mass, because, well, we are not Catholic.  I know, I am being difficult. Joel and I, as is no surprise, have opted out of the traditional American Christmas celebrations.  We have chosen to inform Ross that Santa is indeed pretend.  And we have forbid others from giving him Christmas gifts.  Any other day of the year, for any other reason, with any kind of paper you can give Ross a gift (however we recommend getting it pre-approved bc as small as our house is we cannot keep everything).

You would think with our need for Christ being at the center of our Christmas we would teach our children all of the 'Christian' reasons for the American traditions.  We we do not do that either.  And we prefer no one else does.  Why? Because many of the 'Christian' traditions were born out of a desire for religious leaders to try to move the focus from a secular holiday, to one nearby that was in celebration of Christ.  Not that I chastise them for their efforts; we just would prefer to purge our family Holy days from any secular content.  

All these opinions have resulted in, "A Celebration of Christ's Coming" the Marlowe way.  This year we finally settled on our base design of our celebration.  We will find ornaments to represent the different ways in which the Messiah was Prophesied; we will wrap each one.  We will unwrap one ornament a day and proceed to read the Old testament Prophesy and then How Christ fulfilled that Prophesy for which the ornament represents.  

Hoping that by next year we will have it all worked out with out any kinks.  But for this year we are heavily focusing on the fact that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and we will celebrate with a feast.