Each Pastor at Terra Nova was asked to reflect on their favorite traditions at the holiday season. Matthew Miller is the Community Extension Pastor at Terra. Below is his entry. 

From the beginning of our marriage, Frieda and I wanted to build our own holidays.  We stopped “going home for Christmas”.  Christmas now is at our house and our families rotate through. We also had to make some changes. The extension of the post card Christmas’s my Mom grew up with, a Miller family Christmas was always a pretty spectacular affair with the materialism well out of hand.  My Mom, who could give Martha Stewart a Christmas beat down, made our house look spectacular and served elegant meals (who can make Yorkshire pudding anymore?).  My brother and I left Santa Claus milk and cookies and in turn he buried us under unimaginable gifts.  Frieda grew up with four other brothers and sisters in a house where Mom and Dad were both working full time and Jesus really was “the reason for the season”.  Meals were simple and gift giving was modest.  Her Christmas traditions (including take out chinese food on Christmas Eve) are as important to her memories as the crazy, story book Christmas’s I grew up with are to me.  Combining those two traditions and building shared memories is the challenge.  I’m trying to let go of the “over the top in every way” Christmas.  Matthew and Frieda Christmas is more casual and more modest than what I grew up with.  In turn Frieda puts more effort into gifts and makes our house and the events surrounding the holidays a touch more elegant than what she grew up with.  I would not say this has been an easy process.  I honestly considered blogging about our 3rd annual no holds barred Christmas cage match.

Instead I’ll share the other tradition we have cultivated.  Typically at this time of year I do a ski waxing clinic for the staff at Paragon Athletic Goods in New York.  A couple years ago on a whim, Frieda rode the train down to meet me and we spent the rest of the day kicking around Union Square, where Paragon and a lot of other great shopping and restaurants are located.  We had fun.  We did it again the next year and the next.  This year we expanded the tradition.  I had some travel points built up with Hilton so we got a room in the city for two nights.  Frieda came and watched me do my clinic at Paragon and we spent the rest of the day around Union Square.  There is a great outdoor gift bazar with lots of fair trade and international stuff.  There is also ABC Carpet and Home which might be the most amazing retail store ever.  We ate like vikings … pastries and coffee for breakfast, amazing Thai for lunch, mohitos at “Havana Central” and then seafood for dinner.  Where else but New York can you visit (gastrointestinally at least) France, Malaysia, Cuba and San Francisco all in the same block.  We spent Saturday in Soho shopping.  We visited the new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex, which I didn’t know existed.  Frieda had read about it in a magazine and she waited patiently as I geeked out with my little museum head phones, running around and exclaiming “look at this Frieda Johnny Cash’s boots”, “look at this Frieda Buddy Holly’s suit … he was so skinny!”.  I saw Bruce Springsteen’s first car, a 57 Chevy that he was driving around Jersey when he wrote “Born To Run”, and Joe Strummers iconic 1966 Fender Telecaster with his old set lists still taped to it … a pretty good day for a music geek.  We always stop at Crate and Barrel store in Jersey on the way home and buy a few new ornaments for our tree and these sparkly candles Frieda likes for our Christmas dinner table.

Someday we hope to extend our New York tradition to our kids.  I picture riding the train and going to see a show, museums, maybe a visit to FAO Schwarz.  When my Mom was a little girl growing up in Troy, her father always took the family to the city for a day during the holidays.  She remembers that to be pretty magical.  If we can give some kids a little Christmas magic, balanced out with an advent yearning for Jesus, we will consider that we have done well.

We extend Christmas greetings and hope your Christmas is magical and filled with the presence of Christ.