Ian & Jocelyn Barker

For the uneducated, Christmas is 5 days away. Yeah, so you better get your shopping and planning done now!

I love Christmas. Growing up as a kid (since that how everyone grows up), Christmas was a lot of Church going and parties. My dad is an Anglican minister so we had lots of services which meant lots of carols and hymns. I loved it! I never grew tired of Church and miss the Advent season and emphasis on the nativity and such. I also remember my mom’s baking. She would always bake shortbread and Christmas pudding and all sorts of stuff.

So now we are in 2007 and Jocelyn and I are hosting our first Christmas together. We are staying in Kansas City and my parents are driving from South Carolina to spend 5 days with us. They arrive in 2 hours. On Tuesday we went and got a tree and decorated it last night. It looks amazing because Jocelyn is such a good decorator.

I always come into the holiday season with a certain apprehension because it is such a materialistic time. But I always come back to the fact that I want to celebrate our Lord’s birth with my family with good food and good gifts. We have been blessed this year to be able to have my family with us and we are looking forward to good food, good fellowship, and a good Christmas Eve service.