I think most families have traditions around the different holidays. How many of your traditions were intentional? How many of your traditions were not intentional, and just kind of sprang up and you embraced them?

In our family we use whatever we can find to box up presents. It's pretty common for the box to say one thing, but the inside to have nothing to do with the outside box. Some boxes we will break down and use the next year.

One year we realized one of the boxes we used, had been in use for many many years, since my sister and I were kids. One year all of the cousins in our family drew names to get a gift for a different cousin. My sister Missy's name was chosen by our cousin Scotty. What was in the box I don't remember, but the box itself we DO remember.

as you can see, it does not like to be taken from flat to box-shape anymore and has many layers of scotch tape.

The old label is still there.

A tattered old box. It should not be that important, but yet it is in some way. It is a part of Christmas. The unwritten rules say, whoever gets the box has to take care of it for the next year and make sure they give it to someone else. Occasionally it gets forgotten, and everyone eventually asks, what happened to the Scotty box?

I was talking to my son one day about the cross after thinking about the song "The Old Rugged Cross." I asked him how many people celebrate whatkilled someone so important to them? It made us both think. The cross was a terrible terrible way to die. Having to carry that massive torture device, then be nailed to it and hung by those nails until you were dead. And yet, it is the symbol of Christianity. Why? Because it was not the end of Jesus! What was supposed to be the victory AGAINST Jesus turned out to be OUR victory. Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins.

1 Peter 1:18,19

knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

Death could not hold Jesus, and gives us all hope for us and our loved ones to later have eternal life when Jesus comes a second time for us.

1 Corinthians 15:20-23

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming

The tattered Scotty box, seemingly old and worn out, but a tangible symbol of a Kirkpatrick family Christmas. The old rugged cross, an object of torture that killed our savior, but a symbol of the glorious victory over death and the hope of life eternal.