So for the second year in a row, my wife and I have been going out of our way to make this time of year, known as advent on the Christian calendar, somewhat counter Christmas cultural.  Slow down instead of speed up.  Reflect and anticipate instead of try to squeeze a year’s worth of guilt motivated charitable acts into three weeks. 

Last year, during our first run of this attempt at doing Christmas a little differently, we spent some time with our friend Sara.  Sara is Jewish and she graciously spent shared with us some of the traditions of hanukkah.  She even taught our daughters how to play the dreidel game.  It was a cool time of discovery for all of us, which kind of made this whole Christmas thing feel a little new.  

Fast forward a year.  Sara has moved to Chicago.  (We miss her by the way.)  It is day three of advent.  The advent activity today for our daughters was to put out the manger, but only the manger itself and the sheep and cows because according to the story from the Bible, no one else has showed up yet.  This caused a minor mutiny.  After much debate, a compromise was reached.  The nice manger set (because every good Christian family has more than one manger set right?) was put out on the table with only the animals, while the other(meaning chipped and damaged) manger set was brought out in its entirety.  As the pieces were being pulled out of the bag, we discovered, nestled between the baby Jesus with a chipped arm, and a shepherd with a missing head… two neon colored dreidels.

Beautiful.