Do you ever get a tune stuck in your head? "Anticipation” is a classic song by Carly Simon. It is a great song, but it would not make anyone’s top Christmas songs of all time. However, that song has been taking up residence in my head as Christmas Day gets closer. I find myself singing it to myself. Why? I think it is obvious: Christmas is the most anticipated day of the year.

One of the greatest memories my wife and I have is from the Christmas mornings when our three children lived at home. They were never able to stay in bed very long on Christmas Day before one of them would coax another to come into our bedroom and "wake us up,” as if we didn’t hear them moving about and whispering to each other outside our bedroom door. It got to the point that we took bets on who would come into our room first and what time they would be up. The anticipation of Christmas Day was too much for them: they could not sleep.

Those times are gone now. My children are no longer kids – they are adults living on their own. Has that lessened my anticipation? No, not really. We don’t have young children lurking outside the bedroom door on Christmas Day, but I find that I still wake up early and can’t wait to get the morning started. Maybe it is because it is like no other day in my year. We treat it special. We give gifts and eat food we don’t eat the rest of the year. However, I think it is more than that. I think it is the one day we stop and think about giving other people joy – right from the start of the day until the end. I enjoy opening gifts, but I get more joy watching other people open gifts I have given them. In fact, I may have more anticipation about that than any other part of the day.

I hope you are anticipating Christmas too. I hope it is a day of joyful memories. Soak it in! In comes about one day per year.

Merry Christmas!