{"id":4307,"date":"2021-12-25T07:24:36","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T15:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=4307"},"modified":"2021-12-25T07:24:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T15:24:36","slug":"how-to-get-past-the-baby-stuff-at-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2021\/how-to-get-past-the-baby-stuff-at-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Past the Baby Stuff at Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

You probably already had your birthday this year. I did, but one of my life-long, faithful friends still hasn’t had his birthday. Imagine yours is yet to come.<\/p>\n

To celebrate your birthday, we will hang up pictures of you in your crib — to show we know who this is all about, you know. Generally, though, we will disregard you<\/em> in favor of other festive and seasonal activities. If anyone gets around to remembering you, it will be to reminisce about your birth and baby days. And gifts? We will give each other gifts we think we would enjoy. Maybe we will think to give you a baby rattle or a teddy bear. You would probably say “bah humbug” on birthdays, at least yours. <\/p>\n

\"Mark
Behold, Baby Mark and Mommy Noreen!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the US, the birthdays of certain Presidents rate a national holiday of sorts. That is appropriate for any country to do. But how inspirational would it be for the citizenry to remember these men only as newborn infants?<\/p>\n

Has Baby Jesus grown up yet? Look around you with some attention to the obvious details, and you would think the answer is negative. Any alleged celebration of Jesus\u2019 birth mostly takes us back to His babyhood and infrequently focuses on His adulthood.<\/p>\n

Has the Baby grown up yet? Yes! And let our remembrance focus on that! Let\u2019s make this season a celebration of His accomplishments \u2014 past, present and future. And let\u2019s make our gifts to Him worthy (at least in a minuscule way) of His maturity and accomplishments.<\/p>\n

The Baby is grown up now!<\/p>\n

Can we get beyond the baby stuff this Christmas?<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

The above post is an adaptation of this piece I wrote a couple decades ago: Good Tidings of Great Joy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then six years ago I repurposed it here: Has the Baby Grown Up Yet?<\/a><\/p>\n

Our local paper even published a version of it in their print and Web publications: Has the baby grown up yet?<\/a><\/p>\n

But this is the first time (I think) I’m putting this out there:<\/p>\n

\"Noreen
Noreen Roth with first-born Mark<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We commemorate birthdays. We have had our own fair share of such remembrances. Now we are ending the season to remember a certain birth. But should we be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Begin by imagining a different way of celebrating your own birthday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"How to Get Past the Baby Stuff at Christmas","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,12,534],"tags":[72,730,857,894,880],"class_list":["post-4307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity-101","category-lessons-for-living","category-todays-thought","tag-christianity","tag-christmas","tag-holidays","tag-inspirational","tag-life-lessons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/noreen-roth-with-her-baby-mark.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-17t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}