Our grandchildren were at our home yesterday for a few hours of intense cookie-making and making Christmas presents for their parents. It was a bit wild for a few minutes, with paint and fabric markers and cookie dough in small hands and grandparents scrambling to contain spills and provide assistance to the small creators. Sugar cookies, cut to the shapes of Christmas trees, bells, stars, hearts and a few other shapes were liberally decorated with sugar sprinkles before they were popped into the oven to bake. Of course the young cookie decorators were eager to taste the results of their work and to package a box of cookies to go home with them, some of them destined to be left as a treat for Santa’s visit tonight.

It was precisely the kind of activity for which we made the move to this part of the country. After many years of living far away from our children and grandchildren, we feel extraordinarily blessed to have a home just a couple of miles from our son’s farm. We know that it is a blessing that lots of loving families don’t enjoy. In our mobile society, people travel far and often end up living a long ways from their origins. While we were enjoying three of our grandchildren, we were visiting by FaceTime with our fourth, who lives in South Carolina - almost as far away from our home here in Washington as you can get within the continental United States. We miss him and wish we had a way to see him and his parents more often. But we console ourselves by reminding ourselves of how much closer they are now than when they lived in Japan and we were only able to get together a few times in those five years.

After the children had been picked up by their mother we went for a walk and were talking about some of the lessons that we are able to teach our grandchildren. Grandparents are uniquely situated to teach grandchildren patience. Much of their lives is caught up in a need to be organized and move quickly. Three children need to get up, get dressed, have breakfast, and get organized to go to school most days. They have to share a bathroom, organize their school supplies and get out the door on time with jackets and shoes all on the right kids and each buckled securely into a car seat. After school there is homework and chores and supper and stories and a bit of free time for playing before stories and tooth brushing and getting to bed. Keeping the family flowing means that the parents have to work together to take care of details. The household is a place of nearly constant activity. The children are learning responsibility and care for one another and a host of other things. But they aren’t very used to having to wait for much of anything. Most of the time they are being encouraged to hurry up and move on to the next activity or adventure. When they come to our house, the pace is a bit different. We always have lots to do, but we also like to take time between activities to listen and to tell stories. And we’re always just a little bit overwhelmed with three children at three different ages all at once. We only had two children of our own. I sometimes wonder how my mother and father coped with seven children in the family. We find three to be a hand-full. But we do try to help them develop patience. And we do try to tell them stories of their heritage.

I enjoy telling stories and I like to tell our grandchildren stories of my parents and of the years when I was growing up. Usually they’re pretty interested in hearing those stories. I know that there will be times in their lives when those stories seem less relevant, so I try to tell them now when they are at ages to appreciate them. One of yesterday’s stories was about my brother whose birthday is Christmas Eve. I’ll be calling him to wish him happy birthday in a little while, but our grandchildren won’t be in on that particular call. Our grandson said he didn’t think that it would be that much fun to have your birthday and Christmas all together in a single holiday. I told him of the many things our parents did to make his birthday celebration a distinct event separate from Christmas. As our house, December 24 was all about the birthday until it got dark outside. We had a birthday celebration with cake and presents for the birthday boy at lunch time. It was a pretty natural event in our household because we had our biggest meal of the day at noon. Our father closed his store for an hour from 12 to 1 and we were used to gathering around the family table for that hour.

Christmas celebrations only started after our father was home from work and it was dark outside, usually after 5 pm. Then we had our supper and gathered around the piano to read the Christmas story and sing carols. Each child was allowed to choose one Christmas present to open on Christmas eve before heading to bed. We often were eager to get to bed as quickly as possible so that we could hasten the coming of Christmas morning when there would be a special breakfast and lots of gifts to open.

The Christmas Eve service at our church was for adults only. It happened at 10 pm. I think I only went to that service 5 times before I was married and our Christmas Eve traditions shifted to my wife’s church for a while before we became pastors of other congregations. There was a pickup choir that sang mostly Christmas carols in four part harmony and we lit candles and sang carols. Somehow those few years gave me a love for the late Christmas Eve service that remains to this day. I am eagerly looking forward to the 11:30 service at our church tonight.

We know that we have precious few years with our grandchildren before they will be off on their own life adventures. In the meantime we’ll try to continue to teach them a few lessons and tell them a few stories. After all, they’re teaching us a lot about patience as well.