Advent Devotional by Rachel Mumaw-Schweser

Ecclesiastes 3

He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

I love Christmas! It’s my favorite season, from the lights to the music to the cookies. Growing up, my favorite Christmas cookies were my great-grandma’s orange snowballs, lovingly made with frozen orange juice concentrate, Nilla wafers, and coconut. I have a photo of us standing at the counter one Christmas, making batches of them for her friends and family. GG rolled out the cookies into perfect little spheres while my tiny hands smushed them as I tried to get them covered in coconut. For me, Christmas isn’t Christmas without orange snowballs.

One of the fun parts about getting married is learning another family’s set of traditions. For Noah, Christmas Eve isn’t Christmas Eve without shepherd’s pie. And when I tasted my father-in-law’s shepherd’s pie for the first time, I completely understood. It’s warm, comforting and makes for a cozy Christmas Eve dinner.

These family traditions are part of what makes the Christmas season magical. They’re little pieces of the past we bring with us into our present, and maybe they continue into our future. The good ones can connect us to our loved ones, while others may not fit into our lives anymore, or they may take a different form. Everything has its season, and just because something comes to an end doesn’t mean that it isn’t important or meaningful. This year, Noah and I are merging our traditions, figuring out what serves us as a couple and what may need to be let go. We’ll be figuring out how to make elaborate shepherd’s pies with three Christmas Eve services to attend and debating what Christmas cookies we should bake. Eventually, we will have our own traditions, some from the past and some built just for our present time.

Rachel Mumaw-Schweser