Making Room at Your Christmas Table

Over the years we’ve been successful at creating some wonderful family traditions on Christmas day. 

1. Stockings on the bed. All the kids pile into our bed, and we open stockings together—they're filled with lots of the usual trivial, funny stuff. Followed by a wrapping paper ball fight. This has got more and more difficult as the children are now all adults. Inevitably, Dad is now ejected from the bed...
2. Dad makes breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs: delicious. He also gets the roast beast in the oven at the same time on a low heat…
3. Two significant presents around the tree: with compulsory complaining about who goes first, how many, etc.
4. Church. Preceded by general shrieking, shouting, and chivvying. It never gets any easier.
5. Back home for the grand gift opening bonanza. Dad making frequent trips to the kitchen.
6. Doorbell goes and… guests arrive…

Since we started doing Christmas as a family together, we’ve always tried to include others. We have regular guests—an older lady from church who has become a treasured family member (in fact it’s become a bit of a family game to get her to drink more than 2 glasses of sherry). At various stages in the past, we have entertained a recently converted muslim woman (who was completely bowled over by the hospitality we showed her), a couple of slightly oddball single men, a Turkish woman (who sang folk songs to us in the candlelight) and a single mother with eating issues who doesn’t really sit at the table, but wanders around it.

It’s all really very good natured and a lot of fun—and we certainly have lots of “Christmas day stories” to tell. One downside has been that sometimes our own children hunger for it to be “just us”, but I honestly believe that they are gaining more from the presence and interaction we have with a wider group of people on Christmas day. We often have a discussion or ask a question about “the best present you ever had” or “your most memorable, or worst Christmas day”, that reveals a lot about each other. And the queen’s speech. And the compulsory mad game afterwards.

I’m reminded that when the angel announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds the message was one of joy for all people. The message of the baby in the manger is not just to be shared with people that are like you, around whom you feel comfortable. Making room at your table for guests, regular or random, is a great way to model the true meaning of Christmas.