Nativity Supper

Jim and I have been thinking a lot lately about how we can be missionaries in our local community. There is very little godliness in the houses along our driveway, so we don’t have to look far for a mission field.

Last year, I posted something on my blog around Christmastime, asking if any of you had special traditions or ideas for making the holiday meaningful and memorable. A few of you shared your ideas (I’m always glad for more!) and one of them kept coming back to me as we talked about reaching out to our neighbors.

The idea was for a Nativity Supper. Before each course of the meal, a portion of the Christmas story is read from the Bible and then foods are served that correspond with the scripture. As she told me, the first reading was about the angel coming to Mary and then she served an appetizer of wings. The next reading was about Jesus’ birth and the shepherds, followed by the main entree of shepherd’s pie. The last reading was about the wise men and her dessert included gold-wrapped chocolates.

I thought this would be a great way to invite some of our neighbors into our home, get to know them better, and also include some meaningful “reason for the season” input in a not-so-threatening way. The problem has been the busyness of the holiday season and we ended up with only one couple accepting our dinner invitation–and they’re the ones who are believers already. I’m kind of disappointed about that, but we’re going to go ahead and maybe next year we’ll try again.

I’m going to keep my menu very similar to the original idea. That means I get to try my hand at making wings for the first time. For the main course, I’m making shepherd’s pie, a rustic multigrain bread and probably a fruit salad of some kind. I’m not sure what dessert will be yet, but I did get some gold “nuggets.” I was sure that one of the candy companies made a chocolate called “Treasures,” but I couldn’t find them anywhere so I settled for Hershey’s Nuggets.

I encourage you to keep looking for ways to centralize the real Gift of Christmas in your celebrations, and also for ways to shine the Light to those around you!

Advertisement