For the past few years, my mom has sent me a subscription to Southern Living and I love going through their December issues. Each year, they feature a beautiful white cake on the cover, calling it the Christmas cake of the season. And I have always wondered, why cake?
It’s not that I don’t like cake, it’s just that there are so many other good desserts to choose from. I’d look at the pretty cake and think oh that’s nice, it must have taken them a lot of work, and move past it to the h’ourderuves and dinner sections to plan out our holiday meals.
Until now.
You see this is the first year where my 3 year old has really been gripped by the idea of birthdays. Especially birthday cakes. He has a sweet tooth like his mama. For the month leading up to his birthday, he would ask if it was time to celebrate his birthday yet. When the day came, you better believe that boy was excited. He was psyched to see a couple friends, he enjoyed his gifts, he was very happy about the pizza– but his favorite part was the cake.
Since then, he has asked about birthdays and the next time that we’ll get to eat cake 🙂 and it dawned on me–Christmas could be a wonderful time to teach Aiden about Jesus by throwing Jesus a birthday party.
So we told him that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus’ birthday. That Jesus was born to live and die for us so that we might live forever with Him. That on Christmas, we’re throwing Jesus a birthday party.
He, of course, asked about the cake. And I asked, what kind of cake would you like to make for Jesus, bud? He squealed, “Chocolate!” And ever since, when he talks about birthdays, he mentions how we’re making a chocolate birthday cake for Jesus to celebrate His birthday. And friends, that gets my mama heart so excited. Because it’s one more step closer to him knowing about (and maybe actually knowing) Jesus.
So sometime next week, we’ll make a white cake. It won’t be fancy or from scratch, but it will be our Christmas cake. Chocolate, of course. We’ll get some candles, and maybe even some balloons, and sometime on Christmas day, we’ll pull out that cake and sing Jesus Happy birthday. We’ll take some pictures, and talk with the boys about how God is so loving that he lets us share in His birthday and we get to receive presents too. We’ll talk about how the gifts we give to Jesus are our worship of Him, and the gifts we have given this December to those in need. And that just like how the shepherds and wise men spent time in worship at Jesus’ birth, we go to a Christmas Eve service to worship God in celebration of His birthday.
What I once thought was a fancy, Southern tradition–the making of a white Christmas cake–may just become one of our most meaningful traditions yet.
Has your family ever thrown a birthday party for Jesus? Any words of advice or tips for starting the tradition?
