Dear James, Darcy, and Ellie,

Today has been a rather different kind of Christmas day. We celebrated our family Christmas gathering last weekend. We scheduled it then because Uncle Preston and Aunt Faina were not going to be able to be here on December 25th. As it turns out, we sure are glad we did! Gran and Grandad have not felt well for the past week or so; and we couldn’t get around you today anyway. Thanks to the miracle of Facetime, we got to go on your tour of Santa’s treasures, though!

Christmas 2017 is the year we changed Christmas to December 16th; but really, there’s nothing especially holy about the 25th of December.

Choosing the day for Christmas has been a rather random process over the years. The Gospels and the story of the early church in Acts don’t offer instructions on commemorating the birthday of our Lord. For the first 200 years or so after His birth, Christian writers are virtually silent on the subject.

Not until the 4th century or so did Christians start settling on a specific day. In our faith tradition, His birthday became December 25th. I find that date strange, given the description that “… there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night” (Luke 2:8, New International Version). It’s much more likely that the sheep would have been “out in the fields” in the spring, instead of December!

I won’t bore you at your young age with all the details of the Christmas Day deliberations. I’ll save that for when you’re older! Suffice it to say that our family is not the first family in history to celebrate Christmas on a day other than December 25th.

What’s truth is that Jesus was born. What’s of utmost personal importance is that you know that Jesus was born for you. I pray every morning that each of you will come to receive the living presence of Jesus in your lives. That, my three grandchildren, will be Christmas Day.

• Letters to My Grandchildren