It's Christmas, and I really don't know what to say about that. We are doing a low-key event this time around. It will be just my wife and I. We will go out for breakfast, and then we'll come back to cook together in the kitchen.

It will be quiet, except for the Christmas music and the cats begging for more to eat. We'll have one another without distraction. We'll savour the food we cook and our own company. We'll remember Christmases now past and anticipate future holidays with children; however, this one is just for us.

Christmas is a time that for some is lovely and for others is frantic, if not tragic. The stress of these holidays, including the need to get them 'right', can become overwhelming.

Just what Christmas is for any given person is relative to that person, of course. There is a great article on it at the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas). Christmas is many things to many people. It's the celebration of the birth of Christ, and it's a retailer's dream. It's a reworked pagan festival, and it's a child's adventure. It's about Santa Claus; it's about Jesus.

Christmas is filled with both good stress and bad stress. The good stress comes from the excitement and the physical and emotional expense of seeing loved ones, working to plan for and prepare celebrations, and keeping one's hands on events that seem to be turning out just like one wants, and it's the excitement of bright lights, good food, music, and happy circumstances.

The bad stress comes from having to be with people you haven't been enjoying, letting people down when what you've done is not appreciated or doesn't approach getting it 'right', not having the finances to fund what you'd like to do or even worse.

Often it seems that true tragedies occur around the holidays, and we see troubling and sad news. "Why," we might ask ourselves, "do these kinds of things happen so often around Christmas?"

Some will say there is a spiritual battle being waged in the world of men and women, which peaks at the time of the birth of Christ, and others will say that the same things are happening all year round, but that we are just more sensitive to them because of the tenderness we feel at this time of the year. Either way, it is troubling, sad, and stressful to observe suffering at a time when we wish peace and wholeness, love and beneficence.

Imagine what a good thing it would be if you had the freedom to get things wrong. Then, all you'd have to do is give it your best effort, try to do something nice, and the sense of care and affection that you experienced inside would be the main thing. That's what is meant by the sentiment that it's not the gift that counts but the thought, right? But is that the rule with your people? Is that the rule you allow for yourself? What if you were really free to get things wrong? Wouldn't that take a load of worry off your mind!

Christmas is also about the people who are dear to us important for various reasons. Last year my wife and I rented a house along the Oregon coast, and we had our children come down, along with my sister, my father and my brother who was caring for our father at the time.

Today we have pictures of that time. Now, during that Christmas there were events that could be described as 'good stress' and there were events that could be described as 'bad stress', but when I take those pictures out and look at them, they give perspective to my life and my relationships with all those people who are very important people to me.

For instance, there is one picture of a bathtub that was down a tight spiral staircase in the lower part of this house. We had to lower my father down those stairs and then put him into the tub, for which all the guys were present and helpful; yet, when we got Dad into the water, and I looked around, all the guys had left me with the job of actually bathing the man. So, at the time I was not so happy, but now, looking back and seeing that bathtub, I have a whole different experience, and it's a priceless one. I am so thankful I got a chance to do that for my father before he died.

My father was never much for expressing his emotions. In some of the pictures taken that day he looks right down the lens at me, and in his eyes I see things. I see priceless things, and I feel healing affection for the man. There were times when I told him that I loved him, but I'm not sure he let it in. Christmas is a time to let it in, to let it out so that others can let it in, and a time for being real with one another about our appreciation.

So, I wish for everyone a Christmas that is filled with good stress, the freedom to get things wrong, the presence of significant people, and the chance to express heartfelt affection. I will take more pictures this time around. I want to capture the cats begging for food, Linda in her Christmas attire, the kitchen, and the little table with candles, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green peas, cranberry sauce, and mulled wine.

I want to set up the tripod with our video camera recording how we work together in the kitchen, how we are in one another's space, and I want to have that around in years to come so that we can look back and celebrate what Christmas means to us, because it's not just about Jesus, and it's not just about us. It's who we are and how we are together-literally together because of who Jesus is within us..