A Happier Holiday with the Kims

This holiday season is tucked away into memory now, and I feel as if I’ve let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. A sigh of relief I didn’t expect.

Because this year was not like last year.

On the surface, last year should have been the better holiday season. This year, we stayed in Seoul and missed seeing our families. Last year, we spent Christmas with my family on Kauai and a second week in Honolulu. The beach! The sun! Shave ice! Fun relatives!

Sounds awesome, right?

Notice Luca's face. Typical of the trip...

The kicker, though, is that the holiday season a year ago was the peak of the hardest time in our lives so far, when Luca was sick. Hawaii kicked off a run of ER visits and hospitalizations.

This holiday season, I tried not to pressure myself, but I felt like it was truly Luca’s first Christmas: he’s healthy, he’s thriving, he’s aware of his surroundings. He gets excited.

I couldn’t wait to see the magic of the season come alive for him, and that sense gave me a burst of creative motivation.

I prepared... and started to understand Clark Griswold’s obsession with making his family Christmas absolutely perfect.

I made some Pinterest-worthy Christmas crafts, the best being Luca’s felt tree, which he liked to decorate at first, but soon decided was more fun to undecorate and pull from the wall. Hey, at least it distracted him from the big tree.

And, in addition to our Advent wreath and candles, I introduced a new tradition for our family: the Jesse Tree, which tells the story of the Old Testament, leading up to Christ's birth.

I had high expectations.

But Advent came, and we all got sick. Luca was sick for half the Christmas season. Two out of three colds since August had landed him in the ER for breathing problems, so I stressed and vigilantly puffed his inhaler to keep his lungs from freaking out.

I kept up with the Jesse Tree for the most part—hanging one ornament to represent someone in Jesus’ genealogy each day (or, you know, two every other day), and reading applicable Bible verses—but we never once got to our Advent wreath candles on a Sunday. Hey, it still counts on Monday, right?

Even the final candle—we lit it the day after Christmas instead of Christmas Eve.

It was hard to really bask in the Advent season in preparation for Christmas, as I’d hoped.

One saving grace, though, came in the form of three people Joe and I love very much: visitors! More on them in another post, but suffice it to say that there is something so wonderfully precious about watching people I care about meet and care for my son.

Reindeer sweater!!

A few days before Christmas, everything was coming together. Our colds were over. We had a Saturday night carol service at our church (Luca danced to the music and didn’t cause too much of a scene when he got bored, and he even cooperated to let us stay for the dinner afterward). We planned to attend a neighbor's small party on Christmas Eve and a food-allergy-friendly dinner with close friends on Christmas Day.

Christmas was shaping up to be wonderful.

But then, late the night before, toward the end of our friends’ party, Luca started coughing. A lot. Some barking coughs. Some Gollum coughs.

He slept horribly and coughed often. His skin felt warm. I just knew he’d get a fever and feel terrible on Christmas Day. I was already scheming to move our gift-giving to the weekend and arrange for to-go plates for dinner. I was disappointed at the thought of missing the shared Christmas meal we had planned.

But, no, Christmas was magical. Yes, Luca felt sick, but he didn’t get a fever, and he didn’t struggle to breathe. We still got to give him presents; we still got to spend time with our friends.

It was just fun:

The night-before preparations.

The discovery.

The wonderfully slow process of opening each gift and playing with it a while before taking interest in the next.

The crash.

After Luca’s nap, he came out of his room with a curious, almost worried look on his face.

Was all that real? His expression seemed to say.

Focused, he walked right past me into the living room and around the couches. There, after seeing his new toys hadn't vanished, he grinned, relieved and excited. He made the rounds to each one, saying its name and playing with it a little bit.

His favorites? The dump truck (“dump uht”) and excavator (“eh wawa”) Joe and I picked out. He wouldn’t let them go when we left for our food-allergy-safe Christmas dinner with close friends a few minutes later.

There’s a joy to knowing we gave our child something he delights in. I’m proud, watching him stack blocks in his dump truck, move it around with a “Vvvvvv” and lift the back, shouting, “Dump!” as blocks tumble out.

Side note: I can't imagine giving Santa credit for the best gift of Christmas. Maybe that's selfish, but I'm still figuring out my position on the subject...

Anyway, I can’t help but remember that Christmas gift-giving is a small reflection of the greatest gift in history: God giving up Heaven for a time to become one of us—a human, a baby, Jesus—so that we can be close to him despite our imperfections. But it's also a reflection of the gifts God gives in the day-to-day, like health, a better Christmas and a better New Year than the last.

When I rang in 2013, dinner found me sitting on a hotel couch in one of Joe's t-shirts eating Round Table Pizza and sipping wine from a plastic cup while a suffering Luca laid on my lap. I woke up several hours after going to sleep and heard fireworks from the direction of the beach, and prayed they wouldn't wake my son.

This year, we still didn't make it until midnight, but our moods were light, carefree, happy.

On New Year's Day, Joe and I took time before bed to look at photos of last Christmas and New Year's, and some from the rest of the year. It was amazing to see how much has changed, improved.

I couldn't get through it without grabbing a tissue.

Seeing Luca delight in the gifts I've given him or the crafts I made for him gives me so much joy, but the photos reminded me that the gifts God has given me are so much grander than a toy construction set or a felt tree.

It's emotional for me to bring to mind all we faced last winter, but at the same time, I'd never before felt God's hand so firmly at my back, supporting me. His comfort was never so real to me as that time when I truly needed him. And he provided friends and family to surround us as well, propping us up when we felt so close to falling.

So this year, I am taking a cue from Luca and basking in a gift from God: His presence. He was there last year when I needed him so badly, and therefore I am confident he is here this year, hiding in the glories of a happy holiday.


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“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:11-13