My kids love Christmas Eve.  They always have.

Santa has been part of our Christmas since T-man and Bear were little.  I know not everyone does the Santa thing, but it was a tradition both BrightSide and I wanted to share with our kids.  Milk and cookies left out at bedtime, the breathless anticipation of children waiting to hear someone come down the chimney, and eventually (thanks to their playschool teachers) scattering “reindeer food” in the front yard.

This is our first year without Santa believers in the house, and we’re trying to find a balance between which traditions to carry on and which ones to let slip away.  Bear has fluctuated between holding on to the spirit of certain holiday moments and approaching Christmas with a new perspective.  T-man seems unwilling to believe at all in the spirit of the season’s magic, instead periodically bursting out with some new revelation.  (“Hey!  So you and dad have been eating those cookies all these years?!”)

It’s been an interesting month.

Now here we are, on Christmas Eve, where the rubber (metaphorically) meets the road.  Will tonight be just as magical, even with the knowledge that the man in the red suit won’t deliver their presents?  It might not truly register until Christmas morning, but I think the kids will find that this is still precious time together with a few surprises thrown in.

As for this evening, our church has something called the Spontaneous Christmas Pageant on Christmas Eve and we’ve been going for about four years now.  It’s a family friendly service – when the kids (from littles to bigs) arrive they choose whether they want to be an angel, a shepherd, or a wise man (person).  Then they participate in acting out the Christmas story with the help of a few teens/adults.

There’s nothing like hearing the call go out for angels and seeing dozens of little ones, proudly wearing their tinsel halos, moving into the aisle and up to the altar.  Some are too scared to go alone, so you have moms or dads crouching by their side.  By the end of the service almost every child has gathered at the front of the church – our angels, shepherds, and wise men – ready to greet the Holy Family.

A couple in the church who has a baby volunteers to play this role.  Dressed in costume, the husband and wife gently carry their infant child to the altar and lay him or her in a wooden manger.  Then all the children gather around the baby, staring in wonder at the smallest one among them.  It really is something to see.

T-man stopped choosing a role last year, but Bear continues to play the part of an angel.  She’s already excited about tonight, and I wonder if she might consider helping lead the service once she’s too old to participate from the pews.  She loves kids, and it seems like the sort of thing she’d enjoy doing to help them remember the Christmas story.

Some people see Santa and the story of Jesus’ birth as opposing components of Christmas, but I’ve never really looked at it that way.  We used to attend a church that had their own special tradition: before mass began on Christmas Eve, Santa would arrive in the church.  He was a wonderful Santa – a big, round fella with a white beard and beautiful red suit.  He would quietly walk down the aisle to kneel before the baby Jesus in the nativity scene.  After bowing his head in prayer, Santa would rise and silently leave the church to begin visiting children around the world.

This was what Christmas was about.  Everyone, even the man in the red suit that captivated every small child there, stopped to kneel in honor of the baby in the manger.

T-man and Bear might not be waiting for reindeer on the roof this year, but I’m hoping they’ll feel some of that Christmas spirit in tonight’s service.  I know that I will.