Here is a brief introduction to a Challies family Christmas. It’s really the only kind of Christmas I’ve ever known and it’s one I’ve come to love.

I grew up as part of a tradition that celebrated Christmas but did not generally emphasize it as a day to remember the birth of Jesus. It was not quite a secular holiday, but neither was it a sacred one. Aileen’s family was quite similar. So our Christmas traditions include little by the way of reading nativity stories or lighting candles. It’s also worth mentioning that our Christmas traditions are evolving as time goes on. Now that my family has moved to the U.S., we spend every second Christmas in the south. My parents and all of my siblings gather (from Toronto, New York City, Atlanta and Chattanooga) and we celebrate Christmas together. This is an off-year for us, meaning that we are at home in Canada.

We had a quiet Christmas Eve and mostly focused on getting the children to bed at a good hour. Last night I convinced Aileen to let me open one of my gifts which I knew was the complete Faulty Towers. That kept us occupied between the kids’ bedtime and our own. Just before bed we laid out the stockings and made sure the gifts were where they needed to be. We don’t do the Santa thing.

Christmas morning we began with stockings for the children and then ate our traditional breakfast of home made croissants and bacon and egg rings (which my mom made when I was a kid and I make now). Those bacon and egg rings are made in muffin tins and are really quite delicious—much better than standard bacon and eggs. That’s a tradition that goes back as far as I can remember. After breakfast we got to work and began opening gifts, moving from youngest to oldest and going until they were done (and since we’re not huge gift-givers, this doesn’t take too long). And now we’re just taking it easy and looking toward the afternoon when we’ll be going to Aileen’s folk’s place. And, of course, we’re helping the kids build Lego sets, charge up batteries, figure out instructions, and so on. We’ll be spending the day fairly quietly, just enjoying family and lots of good food.

And that’s about all. We try to keep Christmas fairly simple and low-key. It’s usually just about the best day of the year.

From me and from my family to you and to yours…Merry Christmas!