Are you ready for Christmas?

It is the time of the year when you hear a lot of conversations starting with "Are you ready for Christmas?" Your family and friends ask you, cashiers at the stores ask you, and sometimes perfect strangers ask you with a smile. The first time a friend from church asked me this question I answered without hesitation, "Yes."  I was thinking, I got the Christmas tree up and decorated, and had a few gifts for our baby daughter under the tree.  What more is there to do?

I grew up in Korea and our family never celebrated Christmas. Christmas was a christian holiday and unless you belonged to some church it was just another day.  If you did belong to a church you would go to church on Christmas eve and exchange gifts with your friends, sing carols, and maybe play some games.  Since that is all I knew about Christmas having a Christmas tree with twinkling lights and gifts under the tree was more than sufficient to say, "Yes" to "are you ready for Christmas?"

But pretty soon I found out there is a lot more to do to be ready for Christmas.  First, a lady from our church showed up at our door step with a fruit basket.  Since we were young and poor I was really grateful for the gift and I found out that people do these kinds of things during the Christmas season.  Then I noticed that there were a lot of home baked goods exchanged between friends and neighbors. I think we eat more home made cookies, cakes, and sweet breads during December than any other month.  I mean, you can recycle some of them and no one will notice.  Well, if you want to do that, make sure you know which cookies came from which family so you don't accidentally re-gift their own. The family newsletters and Christmas cards from distant families and friends who never had contact with you throughout whole year start to show up in your mail box. Then there is endless gift buying and making; getting a perfect family picture; Christmas parties for work, family, and friends to attend.  The list goes on and on.  How can you possibly be ready for Christmas when the list of the things to do is about 10 pages long?  I learned really quick that when someone asks if I am ready for Christmas, the correct answer is always "No."

Over the years with our children we also participated in gift giving, cookie plate delivering, and caroling. The best part of Christmas is bringing families together.  That is why we look forward to Christmas every year.  Making sugar cookies together, movie nights with a fire going, hot chocolate after the caroling and reading the Christmas story together.  What is there to not love about Christmas.  So of course I am ready for Christmas.  Not because I have all the perfect gifts for everyone, or have the best looking sugar cookies to share. But because we can be together with our family.