A week before my first son was born I spent a very special afternoon with my Grandmother. She is famous for making wonderful chocolates, especially carmel turtles. They are the best. It was getting near Christmas and I’d convinced her to let me help her make her Christmas chocolates. I went with the hope that I’d be able to learn how to make chocolates, but it turned out that she taught me something much more important.
It was a beautiful afternoon and were sitting at her kitchen table rolling the centers for the mints we were going to dip. My baby was due soon and I was complaining to her how bad I felt that my baby would probably have a birthday around Christmas time. “It is such a bummer,” I told her, “His birthday will always be eclipsed by Christmas and he’ll have to wait a whole year before he gets any presents again!” She listened to me and then smiled at me in a knowing way. My father, her fourth child, was born only a few days before Christmas. She told me about how she’d worried she’d be in the hospital on Christmas and prayed that he would come before then. But then she looked at me with her deep, wise eyes and said, “But you know Heather, there is something really special about having a baby– especially a baby boy– at Christmas time.”
Those words really touched my heart, and that night as I snuggled into my bed and felt the little boy inside of me wiggle I thought about what my Grandmother meant.
I thought of Mary and of the precious baby boy that she carried inside of her. I wondered if she felt a lot of the same apprehension and fear that I did. If she ever doubted her ability to be a mother, or worried about her capacity to handle what would be placed on her shoulders. I wondered how she would have prepared to give birth and I imagined what it must have been like for her to become a mother. As I thought about her, I began to see what my Grandmother meant. There was something very special about having a baby at Christmas. I saw things in a way I never had before.
It was real.
Mary was a real woman, with real feelings and real Braxton-Hicks contractions, and Jesus was a real baby. A real baby who was delivered by His mother in the same way I was going to deliver mine. And that changed my whole perspective. I began to feel a deep kinship with Mary and rejoice that I would get to celebrate the birth of my baby at the same time as the world celebrated the birth of Mary’s son.
A week later, my little boy was born, and I felt love like I’d never felt it before. It made that Christmas the most special one of my whole life, one full of complete joy and awe. It turned my heart to my Savior Jesus Christ in way that is hard to describe, and taught me things deep in my heart.
I often hear people say that they feel bad for people with December birthday’s, especially if they are near Christmas. They lament the fact, much like I did at my Grandmother’s house, that their special day doesn’t get the attention it might have gotten at any other time of the year. If that is something that you have said, or felt, I hope that perhaps my Grandmother’s words can change the way you look at it, because it IS an incredible thing to give birth to a baby in December. To be heavy with child as you read about Mary traveling to Jerusalem, and holding your own newborn child in your arms as you read about Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothes. It is a living demonstration of the Love of God.
I know that each year I celebrate my son’s birthday (we’ve done 7 of them now) I am reminded of how it felt to hold him in my arms for the first time, to feel the miracle and joy of birth and know that with God ALL things are possible. And each year I reflect on Mary and Jesus, and know that it was real. That He really was born, and that God– the Creator of the World– came to Earth as a helpless baby. And there is NOTHING more incredible than that.
So if you are expecting a baby this Christmas season, don’t despair. There is so much more to Christmas that presents and parties.. and having a baby will remind you of that. God knows when your baby needs to be born, so trust that. There are incredible things to be learned from Christmas babies.
If you have a birthday in December I hope that my Grandmother’s words will help you remember that there is very something special about being born around Christmastime– you are a tangible reminder to everyone of what the holiday is all about.
A celebration of Life. Your life. Jesus’s life. Eternal life.
So Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!
