Oh Carolyn, I'm so sorry about your sister-in-law! That will make the Christmas season difficult to struggle through. I'm continuing to carry you and your husband in my heart-prayers throughout the coming weeks.

Ruby, I'm glad you posted. The only thing I can say out of my own on-going experience is that we get the Christmas we plan for. In other words, whatever our focus is, that's the Christmas we make for ourselves. If we focus on it being "just another day", that's all it will be in the end. If we focus on the extravagance of gifts, it will be a day of gifts - and over when the gifts are all unwrapped. If we focus on being together with family, all of our preparations will be centered around making sure the family we want there will be there. It's tough when others try to steal our joy, but somewhere along the way, if we truly want to have the Christmas WE want, we have to put our foot down and declare it to be so.

I know, I know, I should be practising what I preach. It's hard when there are conflicting family dynamics at play. Somehow we have to stay focused on what's important to US and how we choose to view Christmas. For me, it's a joyful spiritual gift from God, but I'm the ONLY one on hubby's side of the family who is so spiritually inclined, so it makes it difficult to bring that aspect to the forefront. But in my heart, I refuse to give it up, and am making my way to the point where I will - one of these years - declare it to be so, that if my in-laws want to celebrate Christmas in my house, they will celebrate it WITH me, not against my beliefs and spiritual values. It's coming...for the past two Christmases, the most prominent Christmas decoration has been the nativity scene and everything else has focused around it, so the rest of the family know now what's important to me.

So stay your own course, and decide what YOU want Christmas to be, and even if the actual circumstances don't completely jive with that vision, you will still carry in your heart your own core "reason for the season".

TVC15, my Dad died two weeks after Christmas of 1999. He never had a chance to use the Christmas gift (a fancy nut cracker he had asked for) we had bought him - or the birthday gifts we had wrapped for his birthday in February. It was painful to see these things that we had lovingly bought for him, but in the end, we decided to use the nut cracker ourselves in memory of him - to this day, whenever we use it, especially at Christmas when all the family's here, we think of him and thank him for the lovely nut cracker!