For the last few years, I’ve taken a moment to write some Christmas thoughts, to ponder, to wonder.Yesterday was full and lovely without a moment to sit and write.

And that was 100% ok with me.

Yesterday started before my alarm went off. I was cooking sausage and kneading dough before 9. I was sipping mimosas out of a coffee cup with people I am so grateful to have in my life before 10:30, I had sufficiently fed 8 people before noon and we had played a round of cards against humanity before 2.

By 5 I had spent an hour singing Christmas carols in preparation for Christmas Eve and baked and bagged 200 cookies. By 6:30 I was huddled in the snow with about thirty people singing Silent Night with candles lit. By 9 I was curled up on couches at my neighbors drinking and laughing and watching Star Wars for the first time.

And by midnight I was asleep.

Even now just writing it I have to smile.

Because if I am being honest, being a single adult, who lives away from her family, holidays feel tricky. You lack traditions you grew up with, you lack a person to share them with, you lack kids to buy presents for.

The holidays can very much give us a picture of what we lack. Money, spouses, gifts, love, kids. They can remind of us people who are no longer there. They can remind us of what we’ve lost.

They can do all of those things, unless we choose to not allow them too.

I could have been a recluse this weekend. I could have closed the kitchen, turned off the porch light, and not asked to join anyone, or anyone to join me. And that probably would have been ok.

But this morning, as I sat pondering my day yesterday, I thought of the manger.

Because the birth of a child brings people together. I remember when my niece Courtlyn was born. It caused something to change and shift. It brought people together. I’ve purchased two plane tickets this year to go see my sweet baby Choi.

The birth of Jesus did the same thing.

If Jesus would have come as a full grown man, it probably would have just been weird. Like, out of nowhere this 30 year old just appears. And people might not have noticed. He might have just blended in.

But he came as a baby.

So people gathered.

And they continue to do so. Even people who don’t believe a baby came, people who celebrate different holidays during this time, they all gather.

I think there were so many lovely things about Jesus coming as a baby. So many beautiful, unique stories that spun off of that singular moment. But, as I ponder yesterday and think forward to later today, I believe that I have found a new favorite angle to the story of baby Jesus in the manger.

It caused people to gather.

I pray you have someone to gather towards today, I send love and light if you’ve lost people that you’ve normally gathered too. I pray you find a piece of them today. If you have an abundance of people to gather with, pull up another chair and invite someone in.

Let us gather together.

Happy Christmas my friends.