One of my sons lives in Beaufort, about 3 hours’ drive from me. He and his wife arrive a few days before Christmas…and the fun begins. He is the grandfather of my three great-grands, so we finish any shopping left and begin our parties. We have a pieza party for the little ones and let them open their gifts from all of us, giving them our full attention…and one uncle in particular is quickly on the floor playing with the toys, too, especially if super heroes are involved.
We have the adult Christmas Dinner and gift opening on Christmas Eve…and I usually hear at least one growing-up story that is “news” to me. It thrills my heart to hear my children talk about their growing-up days and laughing together…sometimes with tears in their eyes.

Christmas morning we have a big breakfast and the children’s favorite is blueberry pancakes. My sons look forward to crispy-fried scrapple and coffee chees, both of which make their wives gag…but their sister joins in very enthusiastically.

I’d love to hear about everyone’s Christmas. By then, our sweet Tori will have caught her breath and have another post ready for us to enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kWq60oyrHVQ?rel=0

Made me think of this blog!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JA8VJh0UJtg

Merry Christmas, everybody. I’ve never been happier…with a seat at all of the Homecoming artists’ concerts, front row center….and Meemaw tucked under my arm as we run all over Heaven. Do you know that she can keep perfect time with her tail wagging at those concerts but sometimes she jumps when Vestal hits high C. And she has a big ‘ole grin that matches mine. Well, we have to run now….so many feet to wash.

Love y’all,
Betty

rachelbaker: How great to send an extra gift to a sponsored child– I’ve never heard of being able to provide $$ for a party at their school, that’s fabulous! And yeah, Matraca has done benefits and appeared at events for Magdalene for years. (Isn’t she beautiful?)

Momma Lloyd: You could write a book about your “Christmas Adventures in Giving!” Those are some of the best stories I’ve ever heard (Wonder if Betty gets to fill up any shoeboxes in heaven? Just doesn’t seem like it would really be heaven for her if she couldn’t help somebody!)

LindaB– BRILLIANT idea about the halfway house for kids who have aged out of foster care! They are so often forgotten about or overlooked, and I don’t think there’s much (if any) follow-up for those kids… I think that is a great answer for a very real need.

Blondie: Love that! We did that for several years in our family, too– then we’d sit around the tree and tell each other what they “got” (gave) for Christmas! I remember one year I gave a goat in my mom’s name, and she bought a missionary a bicycle in mine!

DonnaMariePatterson: Oh my gosh– I think this is one of my all-time favorite ideas! The gift of time and kindness… As Gloria Gaither says, “Do something eternal.”

Our family has always been involved in picking names and information from an angel tree in the lobby of a department store. A couple of years we even had an angel tree in our church. A lady crocheted angels that covered the tree…underneath each one was a name of a family with information on each member of that family.

For several years, I was in charge of collecting and distributing food, clothes and toys to seven different families. Church members filled the boxes in the church lobby for several weeks and our church school had a white Christmas where they brought canned goods wrapped in white tissue paper. That is, they did that the first year. I got so tired of unwrapping those cans that I called off the white Christmas idea and renamed it a love offering. Each of seven Sunday School classes gave a turkey. Another lady and I loaded up the church van and took off with the addresses we had for seven homes all over the county…none of whom we knew and some were very hard to find out in the country. One year we came to this little home where the door was unlocked and no one home. We supposed they left the door open for us. There was a little tree trimmed with homemade paper ornaments. The refrigerator was bare but not for long. We put the toys and clothes under the tree and as we were leaving we saw a rather large picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. When we got back to church there was one family who had not received their things. Seems we delivered their’s to the wrong address. My friend and I consoled ourselves by saying there are no accidents in a Christian’s life….after all, didn’t they have Jesus’ picture in their home? We have lauged so many times at how wonderfully surprised that little family must have been when they came home that day. But for that moment, we had to get on the phone and beg money from our church family to replace all those things so we could make our 8th trip of the day to a waiting family. This was so contageous and filled our hearts so much that we did this on a smalled scale at other times of the year. One time we took a turkey to a family who lived in one room and no cooking stove. My partner and I went home, baked the cotton pickin turkey plus a cake and a couple of other things and took it back to them. There are many stories…like the tme we were taking a very large meatloaf (raw and to be baked) to a family and we saw a dog with small puppies who was so skinny,so we broke off some of that hamburg and fed that mother dog before going into the house. (probably only a dog lover would understand) One time we took a table and chairs to a family and we were so excited we were able to get that donation so we could do that. Next time we went, they had used the table and chairs as wood for their fireplace to keep warm. We only had two or three things like that where it was disappointing.

When I was a little girl, I would always go wth my dad late on Christmas Eve to Mr. Taylor’s men’s clothing store. Upstairs, at Christmas, Mr. Taylor sold all kinds of toys. After the store closed on Christmas Eve he would let my dad and me come in and pick out a few toys, even discounted to dad, and then we would drive out in the country to a man’s home who worked with my dad at the newspaper. Dave and his wife would be waiting for us and we would take the toys into the house and put them around the tiny little tree, trimmed with precious paper messages and chain. We had to be so quiet and I remember how I would always shiver with excitement. That was the best part of my Christmas every year. Doncha know that family named one of their babies after me!

I’ve never heard of the Angel Tree, but am going to enjoy reading about it along with Metro Ministries.

The main thing we do at Christmas is make sure that the children we sponsor get an extra ‘surprise’ gift from us. In the past we have paid for gifts for the children, their families and parties in their schools.

I was at a Matraca Berg concert a few weeks ago and she talked a lot about Magdalene House and Thistle Farms before singing her beautiful song ‘Magdalene’. It made me think of you

We also sent gift cards to a friend so she could provide nutritious food for her family.