They were family; either by blood or marriage, adoption or birth, we shared a common heritage . . . perhaps that’s why our grandparents loom so large in our Christmas recollections. In fact, the song “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go” was a literal reality on Becky’s side of the family.

Generations would gather by the tree in Nannie’s living room the afternoon of Christmas Day; the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel would be read by the youngest grandchild or great-grandchild and a prayer would be said by another; Nannie would give everyone a War Bond; then we would eat and fellowship together, dining on the bounty Becky’s grandmother had been lovingly preparing for days. No doubt that memory fueled Becky’s desire for her grandchildren to call her Nannie and continues to be the impetus for her annual Advent efforts to ensure that Christmas at Nannie’s will be lovingly remembered.

Being a “mother hen” like her grandmother, few things please Becky more than watching her chicks savor her cooking. Thus, starting in mid-December, she can most often be found flitting around in her kitchen to the tune of Christmas carols. Apron-clad and bathed in the aromas of baking fruit cakes and loaves of banana bread, the old family recipes she’s using seem to take her across a bridge to the past and in her mind’s eye faces spring to life . . . faces of folks long-since gone to glory who made Christmas so special in ways that seem so inconsequential now but were so profound to a little girl growing up on a farm in rural South Carolina so many years ago.

Becky and I are now attempting to do for our children and grandchildren what previous generations did for us. Some of the particulars have changed: cash has replaced War Bonds; the tree is no longer a scraggly little pine cut from the woods behind the barn; and we’re seldom dressed in our Sunday-best when we gather Christmas afternoon. But the essentials remain: we hold hands and thank the Lord for the gift of His Son before crowding around Nannie’s table to fellowship as only family members can. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and by God’s grace it ever shall be! Everyone has Christmas memories . . .

I pray yours are as real and warmly meaningful as ours.