What do you enjoy most about Christmas?

[Brian12]

I enjoy spending time with family and helping them prepare the food. What I enjoy most is spending more time in prayer and listening to Jesus. How about you? 

[little2add]

Walking into midnight mass, in a snowstorm , with my wife and kids and singing songs with everybody 

[Guest]

What I enjoy most about Christmas, is Christmas -  and whatever might come with it  

[Lil Red]

It's hard to enjoy Christmas sometimes. But I love decorating the tree, watching the kids open their presents, going to a hope-filled Mass. 

[Lilllabettt]

I dont usually enjoy Christmas, and never have.  I hope one day I can get over myself enough to like it. In the meantime, I treasure the time off. I dont get the actual day off... but I do get 3 days after. I usually work 7 days a week and to have 3 days straight where I dont have to drag myself out of the house is glorious. 

[little2add]

Merry Christmas to all my Phatmass friends & family! There's nothing more special than spending time together with friends and family. Enjoy your time together.

 

[beatitude]

I love the O Antiphons. (O Oriens is my favourite one - I look forward to that Vespers from the beginning of Advent.) I love Christmas Eve. I go to Vigil Mass at my parents' church, which has a half an hour of carols before the Mass begins. I love the singing. I love the fact that parishioners of all ages are present and that children are properly involved in the liturgy. (They have a choir, and at this Mass they usually write and read out the prayers of intercession, hand out hymn books at the beginning, take up the gifts at the Offertory, etc.) I love choosing gifts for family and friends, and the sense of excitement I get when I hit on something I know the person will really appreciate. I enjoy my dad's habit of trying to guess what's in each present before he opens it (and the challenge of wrapping it so he can't tell). I love all the memories of preceding Christmases, even the bittersweet ones. Last year a good friend died on 21st December, and it was hard, but I remember there was sorrow mixed up in the first Christmas too and that this was the kind of world he came into. Christmas makes me feel sewn into that history, and grateful to be a part of it.

[A Yearning Heart]

Christmas time used to be very social for me - I loved spending time with family and friends, going to Midnight Mass, catching up with people I hadn't seen for ages, etc. Now that some have died over the years and many  have started their own families, there is less family and friends time.  I can understand why it can be a lonely time for people.