It is Christmas morning, 2025, and through the decades, I've had a wide variety of Christmas mornings. By choice, I had no children of my own, but I have spent Christmas mornings with little children, and I understand how wonderful it is to have that enchanted kind of morning. I am also a fan of a leisurely morning, even if it ends up feeling like a regular morning. I've had Christmas mornings in my own house and Christmas mornings in the houses of relatives, along with the occasional Christmas morning at a vacation property. I love them all.
This morning, I unwrapped the pumpkin roll that had been waiting for me in the church freezer. I thought we took home the pumpkin roll intended for us, back in the fall, but there was another, in the upstairs refrigerator. The woman who baked it assured me that it was mine, and so I brought it home. It makes a delicious breakfast.
I thought about rolled cakes, about my one attempt to make a Buche de Noel. It was back in my teenage days, when I subscribed to Bon Appetit magazine and actually attempted to make some of the recipes, if the ingredients were ones I could find in Charlottesville, VA and Knoxville, TN, back in the days (1980's) when grocery stores didn't have the wide range of products that they have now.
It was a tasty enough cake, that long ago Buche de Noel, but we all agreed that it was an awful lot of effort for a cake that tasted like, well, cake. My pumpkin roll breakfast was also delicious, but it doesn't really taste like regular cake. It does taste like autumn, so it's a bit out of place on Christmas morning, but since I love both autumn and Christmas, that's fine.
Yesterday was a delightful day which revolved mostly around our trip across the mountain to Bristol, TN, Christmas Eve service, and the trip back. It was unseasonably warm for December, which I no longer complain about; I took advantage of the warm weather and took a longer walk.
I love the Christmas Eve service; it will always be my favorite. Everyone is in a good mood, and all the hymns are familiar. The central message of Christmas is easy to preach, unlike many other texts.
Speaking of sermons, my Christmas Eve sermon was recorded, and you can view it here on my YouTube channel. If you want to read along (or read instead of watching the recording), I posted the sermon manuscript as a post on my theology blog.
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