Happy Epiphany!

Maybe you're the type of person who ignites their Christmas tree on New Year's Eve and watches as it burns in a fiery blaze across some field. Maybe you're the kind of person who promptly takes down all Christmas decorations on January first. Or maybe you're the sort of person who leaves their tree and lights up until February. I'm not here to judge.

I'm the sort of person who weeps as they take the ornaments off the tree. I just don't want the Christmas magic to be over, and my house always seems so dull after those little colorful lights go away. I had to undress the tree yesterday for the boy scouts to pick up. It was my last chance. Normally I don't have the boy scouts pick up my tree; usually I just try to stuff it in my yard debris bin. But this year the tree I got was at least eight feet tall, and I knew there was no way the lid would close on that thing. If I didn't get the boy scouts to take that tree, I probably would have had it until May, carefully sawing off pieces at a time and shoving it in the yard debris bin.

I was really reluctant to take down the tree on Saturday, because it was only January 5th. I wanted to keep my tree up until today, January 6th, which is the Epiphany/Three Kings Day. I don't know anyone who celebrates this, but I wish they would. It would make for a really good party. Guess maybe I should move to Spain or something. Let me explain.

First off, did you know that the 12 Days of Christmas are not the 12 days before Christmas, but rather the days after Christmas leading up to the Epiphany, which celebrates when the three wisemen finally got to visit Jesus? So here we all are in America, trying to ring in the new year and be done with Christmas, but it's really not over.

Instead we could be celebrating on January 6th by making a King's Cake and hiding a bean in it. In the countries that celebrate Three Kings Day, that's when they give gifts. Just think if you made it a tradition to give presents on January 6th instead of December 25th. You would save a lot of money on those after-Christmas sales.

I think next year I will throw an Epiphany party and make this a tradition. I've just gotta get those boy scouts to pick up my tree on January 7th.

Shazaam! Bam! 2013.

It seems the year 2012 was kind of a bust for blogging. For whatever reason, I just did not write that much. I'm not going to beat myself up about it though, because writing to fill space is just noise. There is so much nonsense available to read that I hardly think the world suffered because I didn't contribute more paragraphs. But friends, I'm going to try harder to write more often this year--mostly because I want you to know about all the crazy goodness that is happening/will happen.

Life is good and God is good. I did not always believe it to be true, but it is. I am pumped for this year because I just know that things are going to happen. Things I've been waiting for. Things you've been waiting for, and things neither one of us ever thought of.

I want to leave you with a new quote that's been my new year's motivation:

Action always beats intention.

So get off this blog and go do something that matters. Let's check in with each other in a few days. 

--Joelle