CHRISTMAS AT PENN VIEW

After fourteen years as a Christmas assembly and Benefit Concert spectator, you might imagine me immune to the effects of the moment.  You would be oh-so-wrong. 

The emotion of the season attacks me in the tear ducts every single time. 

Rows of beaming children clad in green and red, singing with intense joy and full voice about the baby who came to save us.  The first and greatest Christmas gift – Jesus.  

(This photo was taken at last year's assembly since this blog will post before this year's annual waterworks start for me!) 

Crazy about Christmas, I am admittedly one of those annoying people who starts listening to holiday music in October.  

The Grinch (I mean my husband) cannot tolerate my premature musical selections and does what he can to swiftly get out of earshot. 

When a person is as holiday-happy as me, there is no better place to work than a school.  If my own enthusiasm is not enough, the energy wafting off the children is absolutely contagious. 

I get excited when I hear Mrs. Thomas outside my door stapling her annual Christmas display to the bulletin board.  My heart beats a little faster when I walk past the music department and hear our student musicians coaxing melodies from shiny handbells and other instruments as they practice and perform Christmas music. 

Construction paper reindeer make me smile and the cookie and cocoa celebration in the cafeteria warms my heart along with my taste buds.  Adding wonderful perspective to all the sparkle and sugar, the wooden crèche in the main lobby reminds us all to pause and reflect on God’s great love for mankind. 

My very favorite annual school tradition is listening to small yet confident five-year-old voices as they narrate the story of Christ’s birth from memory.  

The second chapter of Luke quoted in this way is even better for me than blanket-loving Linus and his heartfelt recitation of the true meaning of Christmas. 

Because at Penn View the conveyors of the message are the little people in kindergarten I have come to know and love.  And they are sharing the greatest story ever told.