The Night Before Christmas

For the first time in my life, I'm having a quiet Christmas Eve.

I'm the baby in my family, which means I was surrounded by the babies of my older siblings every Christmas that I can remember. Laughing. Crying. Playing. Watching movies. Sleeping a little. The anticipation, then the Christmas morning shuffle. The glee. The play. The food.

Tonight, Lyla went to bed early after taking a warm bath and opening new snuggly pajamas that match Nora's. Nora went down for a late-evening snooze. We're ready for Christmas morning and it isn't 10:00 yet.

A lot of our friends here in Texas have asked us if we're going home for Christmas. I know what they mean, but the truth is, we're already home. We're spending Christmas at home—just the four of us—here in our little Texas apartment.

We miss our families and the hustle and bustle we grew up around. But I read some words from Elder Holland that have been on my mind all season and especially today. They reach the heart and soul of Christmas and strike me poignantly as a new mother.

"I grasp for the feelings a mother has when she knows she has conceived a living soul, feels life quicken and grow within her womb, and carries a child to delivery," he says, speaking of Mary. "At such times fathers stand aside and watch, but mothers feel and never forget. Again, I've thought of Luke's careful phrasing about that holy night in Bethlehem:

'The days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and [she] wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and [she] laid him in a manger.' Those brief pronouns trumpet in our ears that, second only to the child himself, Mary is the chiefest figure, the regal queen, mother of mothers—holding center stage in this grandest of all dramatic moments. And those same pronouns also trumpet that, save for her beloved husband, she was very much alone."

Talking to our families on the phone today made me a little homesick for all of them. But it is nice, as long as we're spending Christmas alone, for me to think of that first Christmas night. The quiet, private night that Mary and Joseph spent together with their little family.

"Shepherds would soon arrive and later, wise men from the East. Later yet the memory of that night would bring Santa Claus and Frosty and Rudolph—and all would be welcome. But first and forever there was just a little family, without toys or trees or tinsel. With a baby—that's how Christmas began."

So tonight, I'll give my own baby an extra snuggle and look forward to watching my older baby discover the joy and wonder of Christmas for the third time in her little life, but for the first time she remembers. We're just a little family. And this Christmas, I'll take it.