Christmas Memories and Traditions | Matt Slaughter

This week on RonnieFloyd.com, Pastor and several Cross Church staff members are sharing their Christmas memories and traditions. Today, we hear from Matt Slaughter, Millennial Pastor at the Springdale campus. You can read more from Pastor and other Cross Church staff members about their Christmas traditions at RonnieFloyd.com now thru December 24.

As the son of a Tyson man, I grew up all over—Colcord, OK, Fayetteville, Berryville, and DeQueen, AR. But no matter where we were living at the time, we always spent Christmas Eve night at my grandparents’ house in Prairie Grove, AR. Probably the tradition I treasure the most involved my Grandpa John and how he would gather all the kids around his chair (as many of us that would fit piled onto his lap), and he would read us The Night Before Christmas. As a kid, every word captured our imaginations, and even though we had heard the story year after year, we all seemed to be sitting on pins and needles, waiting to see how it would end.

As I grew up and had a family of my own, it was my children and my sister’s children who fought for a place on Grandpa’s lap as he read The Night Before Christmas from the very same book he read to us. And every year, our children were just as captivated by the story as we were way back then.

In August of 2012, my Grandpa John went to be with the Lord, and not a day passes that we don’t miss him. Now on Christmas Eve, my sister and I meet with our families at my mom and dad’s house, gather the children together, and I read The Night Before Christmas from Grandpa John’s book. The kids aren’t nearly as excited to listen to me read as they were Grandpa, and they let me know I’m not doing the voices right. But it’s an extraordinarily special time for our family. It’s a time to honor a longstanding family tradition, but most of all, a time to honor and remember a man we loved so much.

Now, every Christmas Eve, after the reading of The Night Before Christmas, we open a Bible to the Gospel of Luke and read about the birth of Jesus. My prayer is that the story of His birth—the idea of Emmanuel, God with us—captivates the hearts of our children like nothing else. I want them going to sleep on Christmas Eve with excitement like every child should, but also, with an understanding of what the excitement is all about…WHO the excitement is all about. I want my kids to understand that though we miss Grandpa John every day, it’s that little Baby who is our every hope. It’s that Baby we read about in Luke every Christmas Eve, who left Heaven for Earth, and made it possible for us to see Grandpa’s face again. I know that I for one cannot wait.

Matt Slaughter
Millennial Pastor, Springdale campus
@mattLslaughter