Below is  my Christmas wish list. I hope and pray they all come true.

1. that I have a chance to go and visit my parents and siblings in my home country next year ;

2. that the Lord may continually grant my family happiness, peace, health and prosperity in the coming year ;

3. that orphaned and abandoned children all over the world be loved and cared for and not forgotten especially this special time of the year ;

4. that the Lord grant me and my husband a long , healthy life to be able to support and care  for our only  child and guide him in his growing up years ;

5. that my son grows up to be a good Catholic and a  well educated and successful individual with a compassionate heart for the less fortunate ;

6. long life, health, happiness and prosperity to my parents and siblings ;

7. a stable and happy married life ;

8. worldwide peace ;

9. physical and spiritual strength to face life’s daily problems and challenges ;

10.  many Happy Christmasses to come

I’m very busy at the moment.  A Touching Christmas Story will fill the emptiness of my post today.

This gigantic Christmas tree dwarfed me as I knelt  taking its picture. Beautiful !

Delicious looking ginger bread house . Yum !

My son JM has grown this much from a nine month baby boy I held in my arms nine Christmassses ago.

I treasure every moment spent with my son,  a few years more he won’t be the same as this nine year old boy posing in front of the ginger bread house.

A history of the Christmas Nativity Scene which rests under our Christmas trees.

The traditional association between the gifts mentioned in the song and the various spiritual gifts in the The Twelve Days of Christmas. Happy singing !

Many of our modern Christmas traditions — the things we eat, the songs we sing, the rituals we perform — have resulted from the convergence of customs and observances from around the world.  Here is an interesting article about how our christmas traditions evolved through the centuries.

To your enemy, forgivesness.

To an opponent, tolerance.

To a friend your , heart.

To a customer, service.

To all, charity.

To every child, a good example.

To yourself, respect.

- Oren Arnold

For your kids who are anticipating  Santa’s arrival  on Christmas Eve , here are some cool links for them to visit  from now until the the 24th : Santa and his office , tracking Santa , classic Santa photos , stories and activities with Santa and origin of Santa .

I was organizing the files of my son today and I came upon  these old photos taken during  the Christmasses passed by. I never realized how time flies until I saw these photos and my son was just this small when these were taken.

JM sitting in front of  the image of the Holy Child.

Standing at the foot of a gigantic X’mas tree and Poinsettias.

X’mas tree at home.

The Manger

JM standing at the front of the Giving Tree after the CCD X’mas Pageant 2005.

We’ve been waking up to really cold and foggy mornings, experiencing short days and long nights and our thick clothes are now out of the closet because of the cold weather. One of the signs that Christmas is just around the corner. Quite ironically, shopping malls in this predominantly Buddhist country are all decked up for the coming holidays since early this month.  Christmas decorations are sold everywhere you go, church choirs practicing Christmas carols, Christmas songs being played in the airwaves, people doing their  early Christmas shopping  and many other signs that the most awaited day of the year is fast approaching. Have we ever thought of the relevance in our lives  of all these visual signs of Christmas ? Do these reflect the real meaning of the season dedicated for the birth of our Saviour ? These things being part of our culture, we cannot avoid. I myself, do my yearly Christmas shopping early, mail cards a month before Christmas and decorate my home early for the holidays. But these do not mean that I give more importance to the “physical” aspect of Christmas. I do these things way ahead of time, to give me an  opportunity to contemplate more on the real meaning to the season. The “physical” aspect of Christmas is in my opinion a distraction that prevents us from reflecting on the spiritual meaning of the birth of Christ. I think we Christians should focus more on the real meaning of Christmas and  we can  start Christmas this year.