Away in a manger no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head

"Jesus is the personal approach from the unseen God coming so near that He becomes inescapable. You don't have to find Him ~ you just have to consent to be found."

E. Stanley Jones

One of the traditions we started this year is one that my cousin Dawn's family does. We adapted it a bit for our young children, so here's how we roll at the Ruff house with what we call "a soft place for Jesus." I cut out long strips of soft flannel "straw" with the kids, and we talked about Christmas and what it truly means, and that the best gift we can give to God is our hearts. And if we have asked Jesus to come into our hearts, we want it to be soft and warm and tender, not hard and cold. So I explained that each time I saw them doing something kind, caring, giving, tender, showing self control, doing what is right...that they could put a piece of straw in baby Jesus' bed. The hope was that by Christmas, we could fill His cold, hard manger {basket} with soft, warm straw ~ and that our hearts would look the same as we celebrate his birth on Christmas day. It has been so precious to watch them really trying and to see the babies' chubby little hands lift out the baby and put straw under him, fixing it just so and then putting baby "Jesus" back in his bed. I think it's been a great tangible way for them to begin to understand how thinking of others is really an act of love we can show the Lord, and that it changes our heart in the process. I'm happy to report that our manger is soft and fluffy and full of straw a few days before Christmas, and considering the bad behavior that goes on around here, this is a Christmas miracle indeed.

And no, you're not imagining things, Baby Jesus is changing color ~ the kids kept swapping babies.

On a side note, one of the other things we did this year that has been really great for our kids is not putting gifts under the tree. It actually happened inadvertently ~ I'd been waiting to do wrapping so I could enjoy it when Todd was home from his business trips. But as the days went by without presents under the tree to look at and obsess over, we realized that it was kind of a wonderful thing! Don't get me wrong, I'm all about celebrating the MaGiC of Christmas and I love wrapping presents as beautifully as I can because I think it's festive and fun!  I remember as a child lying under the Christmas tree with my sister, looking at the lights, checking the tags to see whose present was whose, trying to guess what it was, and to see if it was from Mom and Dad or from Santa... But I love that they really haven't focused on or given much thought to the idea that they are getting presents, they haven't talked about it at all really and considering how spoiled and entitled they act at times, this has been a good thing for us.