As we got out the Advent wreath this year, I found myself thinking back on seasons past when our kids were young, and I remembered an Advent reflection my daughter Colleen wrote several years ago. It’s a great reminder of what this season is really all about.

If You’re Good …

By Colleen Free

So often, during the Advent season, I hear people say to their children, “If you’re good, Santa Claus will bring you lots of presents this Christmas.”  Santa Claus and presents make Christmas merrier, but for many people they overshadow the deeper joy of Christmas – the joy of welcoming the Lord Jesus into our world and our lives.  Seeing this, I can only pray that I may someday preserve this joy for my children as it was preserved for me in my childhood.
Coming from a big family, I was fortunate enough to be a part of many traditions, and the most meaningful one for me was at Christmas. At the beginning of Advent, my father built small mangers out of scrap wood, and set one next to each of our beds. Every night before we went to bed, we would each get one piece of hay to put in our manger for every good thing we had done that day.
When I think back on childhood Christmases, I don’t remember hearing, “If you’re good, Santa will bring you lots of presents.” What sticks in my mind is that if I was good, I would have enough hay in my manger, and the Baby Jesus would come.  For the first couple of weeks of Advent, we all struggled to remember as many good deeds as we could every night.
But as Christmas Eve drew closer and closer, we really got into the spirit of it, getting a little nervous that we wouldn’t have enough hay for Jesus. We started concentrating on doing all the good deeds we could think of … making Mom and Dad’s bed, helping with the dishes, setting the table, changing the baby’s diaper. By Christmas Eve, the anticipation was too much, and at bedtime we all tried to stay up to wait for Jesus. The next thing we knew, it was Christmas morning, and there He was, a little Baby Jesus, asleep on the hay! My parents were awakened by squeals of delight over the Baby Jesus as we brought our mangers downstairs to show them. And the little Lord Jesus lay right next to us as we ooh’ed and ah’ed about the contents of our stockings and the presents under the tree. The baby in each of our mangers was only a doll, but that doll, in our eyes, meant that we were good … that Jesus loved us and had come to be with us. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.

Now married, with six children (and one in the womb), Colleen, along with her husband Jason, has continued the tradition, so that their children, too, will always remember the joy of the Christmas manger.