Happy Birthday, Jesus

I did recover from being sick last week (at the left I was in bed after a bout with the stomach flu with my special nurse - Sadik - at my side) in time for Christmas. It did make things a little more hectic, spending several days in bed, but in the long run Christmas is not about decorations and food and parties, but about celebrating Christ's birth.
On Saturday João and celebrated at Gus' house in a "kinda" Brazilian Christmas. Although we were all Brazilians (okay, so I'm not Brazilian, but sort of...), there were some North American customs (I mean, how Brazilian are cranberries???). We had the traditional Christmas "secret friend" gift giving. That was especially fun since I had Christina's name. And double the fun for me since my name got drawn twice and I got two gifts. Not a bad deal, huh? The food and fellowship were lots of fun. So much fun that we lost track of time and got home well after midnight, which was later than we planned.
Unlike many churches, we did have worship on Sunday morning. We weren't sure if we would have 10 or 100 people. As it turns out, the church was reasonable full, although not overflowing. I estimate 60-70 people, which I was very pleased with considering we had a lot of people travelling. We had a great "Happy Birthday Jesus" celebration. I found it meaningful to really focus on worshipping God, thanking him for giving us the gift of His son. Barb had made a giant gift that we opened up to reveal the manger scene - to show the real GIFT of Christmas. Also, we had the opportunity of writing out what we wanted to give to Jesus on his birthday. At the end we even sang "Happy Birthday dear Jesus" and ate cake. I was pleased that the children seemed to excited to celebrate Jesus' birthday. I just HATE that Santa Claus gets "top billing".
After church, Sidney and Roberta came over for pizza and to keep up company. Later in the day, João and I opened gifts we had received from church members and from my family. We had been too busy to do so before that. These are my new "Pretty Kitty" jammies that I received. It's fun to open gifts, but I liked waiting until later, so as to take the focus off the gifts as the central to our celebration.
This was a different Christmas, but as always a great time of year, giving me the chance to stop and be thankful for my Wonderful Saviour.