This is the first year in our seven Christmases as a married couple that we will not be traveling on Christmas. Around October we made the decision that we would stay home. Actually, air fare costs made that decision for us. It's criminal how inflated the ticket prices get during those two weeks of the year, and now that we have to buy a ticket for Kate, we just can't afford to pay the hiked up prices. We'll be spending some time with both sides of the family in January, but for Christmas we'll be at home. In our own house. Not in an airport. I'm not going to lie: I'm pretty excited about that. At first, it was a really emotionally hard thing for me to accept that we wouldn't be able to see family on Christmas. We really do love both sides of our family, and I think it's natural to want to be with those you love on the holidays. But air travel at Christmas is a nightmare that is unparalleled at any other time of year. See the Great Stranded in Denver Adventure of 2008, for instance. So while I wish we could have it both ways, there's a part of me that is relieved to have a break from that after seven straight years of holiday travel.

I've had a long time to get used to the idea that we'll be here for the whole month of December, and once I got over feeling a little sad, I found myself getting excited about making our own traditions. Which leads me to today's photo. This is Kate hanging an ornament on our very first Jesse Tree. I've always wanted to observe Advent in a structured way in our home, but since we're always picking up to leave the state sometime around the middle of the month, the truth is that we usually put up a Christmas tree for a couple of weeks and then work on packing suitcases and buying gifts in time for our departure. Not exactly an intentional, contemplative approach to the celebration of Christ's birth. So starting some kind of Advent observation for us was one of my first priorities this year, and I chose a Jesse Tree. I've always liked the idea of the Jesse Tree, and I like it now because it gives Kate a very tangible way to see both the days ticking off the calendar between now and Christmas and the progression of the story of God's redemption for sinners. I know she's really too young to make all the connections this year, but I hope this is something we can start now and keep doing until it does make sense to her.

I basically made up our Jesse Tree based on information I found online, and it's probably done all wrong, but I figure that makes ours unique. I found a list of all the ornaments we'd need, like an apple to represent the fruit Adam and Eve ate and a wooden star to stand in for the star that shone at Christ's birth. Some of them I was able to find as ready-made ornaments, and those I bought. What I couldn't buy I made using a great template I found online through the Reformed Church in America that allows you to just color and cut and paste the symbols for the different Bible readings. This was no great feat of craftiness, and that's a good thing, because I am not up for that. My crafting ability pretty much ends at cutting and pasting. I think Jesse Trees are really supposed to be leafless trees that simply display the symbols, but we have a short fake Christmas tree left from our apartment days, and I decided that instead of making a special tree, we'd just use that one. The whole thing cost about $13 between Hobby Lobby and Target, and we can use it all again in future years.

We're only a few days into Advent, so there are only a handful of ornaments on our tree so far. Actually, at any given moment, there might not be any ornaments on that tree, since Kate is so in love with them that she takes them off and carries them around the house. Unlike our big Christmas tree, which is located in our office and can be closed off behind double doors along with its multitude of fragile ornaments, we put the Jesse Tree on the floor in the dining room, where Kate can see it any time. None of the ornaments are breakable, and this is, after all, something we're doing to give her a way to touch and see the story of Christmas, so if she wants to cart the story around with her, that's OK with me. Even this early into the process, she gets excited about putting a new ornament on the tree and reading our Bible story every night. Her enthusiasm may have something to do with the fact that she generally gets some kind of post-dinner sweet treat at Jesse Tree time, but I suppose that's alright too. We are celebrating something here, and I want her to feel how special that is. Special and sweet.

Here is a picture of what our tree will look like with all its ornaments, on Christmas Day. Not that all these ornaments will ever stay on the tree at one time. Kate will see to that.