It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
"With the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you 'Be of good cheer!'" - Andy Williams 🔔
So, who still uses Tumblr these days?
Apparently I do. It's 'cause this is my only personal blog page still existing. I have a devotional blog. Just wanna plug that 'cause Jesus deserves it.
Speaking of the Lord, it's His time of the year. For Christians, the rest of their lives is God's, but for most of the world, December 25 is His day.
This year, to save me from tears… Sorry. The sentence started with "This year," so I had to continue the lyrics. OK, so this year, I'm writing a blog entry here on Tumblr as my birthday gift to Jesus and my Christmas gift to the world. I actually planned to record myself singing a Christmas song while playing the piano, but we couldn't find our webcam. It has a good video quality and a very capable mic, and with it, I can shoot from an angle I want, so I couldn't film without it.
So here we are in Tumblr, and it's fitting because this is a throwback post. I was reminiscing on what I've been doing for Christmas through the years beside the gift giving to classmates and teachers as a student and the festive family dinners. What I was thinking about was the things I do, like a Christmas project of my own. I had to go back to my saved files of my deleted Facebook account that got hacked. Then I thought I could go further back to the very first blog I had because I had those posts saved too. The blogs were removed and, unfortunately, the site was shut down in 2021.
Let me take you to a walk down my memory lane of Christmas projects.
It was the year 2007. I wanted to know about the episodes of Disney's The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and poof! I discovered TV.com, a website like IMDB where there are forums and users can blog. I started blogging, and I made some online friends.
Here was my Christmas post there. It's a poem.
"My Christmas Gift For You"
Happy Christmas This poem's for you Though it may not last These words stay true
This Christmas season Let us commemorate For the real reason It's Jesus Christ that we celebrate
He came to this world with humility He said goodbye to save our sins He'll come again for all humanity That's what Christmas means
I just want to give you something In a way that is different I chose to do this rhyming I hope you like this simple present
I can't give expensive things But I can still share what I have I share my blessings I spread the love
I was 14 years old when I wrote this. I think I didn't make it clear enough that Jesus' goodbye there was when He died on the cross, not when He ascended to heaven.
The next year, I made a picture greeting. I had to recreate it because the image in the saved file has watermarks.
Counterclockwise from the top left, that's Aly & AJ's Christmas album, the main cast of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Jessica Simpson's Rejoyce Christmas album, and of course, the Jonas Brothers.
In 2009, celebrities joined Twitter, so I did too. I connected my Twitter and Facebook accounts so that my tweets get posted on FB as well.
I tweeted one of my favorite Christmas songs. (How do we say that for X now? I x'd 💀) That Twitter account got suspended, so I generated this picture. I got the tweet from the FB posts saved.
In 2011, we had this laptop where you can draw on the screen, so I made the 5 squares you see here that are made digitally. The other 4 are drawn on paper.
2013 was the year I started writing many poems throughout the year, so, naturally, my Christmas greeting was another poem.
2014 had a miserable Christmas for me because I had school on Christmas day. We were in the Middle East.
I got severely depressed in 2015, so I wasn't using social media. But, of course, I still celebrated it with my family.
In 2016, my FB got hacked. That's why all the FB post pics above are just generated images.
I made a comeback in 2017.
In 2018, my family was all together in our Church's multi-generational choir. Obviously, this isn't a personal project, but I want to include it here anyway.
That year, I also started playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
Our last Christmas in Bahrain was in 2019. It was our last time singing with the choir as a family.
2020 was our comeback to our home country, and after we got settled in our new house, COVID-19 was a widespread pandemic. It was a year of playing video games, making YouTube videos, and watching TikToks.
The posts below are from my Instagram. That's why there are hashtags.
2021 was a year of productivity. I released music videos of songs I composed and produced, started my Bible devotional blog, and joined a Bible study group.
I made this vid using Animal Crossing. This song's Phil Wickham's, not mine.
This is a screenshot of this blog post.
In November of 2022, God granted my desire to buy myself a piano.
There weren't any more new updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, so my greeting for 2022 was from its ever-updated mobile game.
This year 2023, Blackpink released its mobile game, so here's my greeting:
I thought I would just be looking back at Christmases, but it turned out to be looking back at my life. The Lord has been truly faithful. He keeps on sustaining me and my loved ones. I'm just glad the world recognizes this holiday where we can all celebrate love, which they may not fully understand it's of God. We enjoy the season together whether it's through music, gaming, or even literature like poetry or books, which I haven't done yet, but I just recently finished listening to the audiobook of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Now it has become a new dream of mine to publish a Christmas book.
So, I ended up sharing myself. But what I want you to see is how Christ is the most important that I make effort every December to do something special.
"For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
- Isaiah 9:6, NJKV
A blessed Noël to us all!
With sugar plum love, Celine ❤️