The Twelve Days of Quilts, Day 1

Today I am going to begin a short series of photos and stories for The Twelve Days of Christmas. For those of you who do not come from a liturgical tradition, you may think of The Twelve Days of Christmas as a holiday song. It is a fun song of the season, but the twelve days of Christmas also mark the time from Christmas day until Epiphany on January 6th. On Epiphany we celebrate the coming of the wise men to worship Jesus.

In a worship cycle that is supported by the church calendar, Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas in which we prepare our hearts for Jesus' birth. We typically do not sing Christmas carols, but observe a reverent and penitential season of preparing our hearts for the Lord. On Christmas Eve we light the Christ candle in the Advent wreath, we add Jesus to the nativity scene and play Joy to the Word to our hearts' content. We then take the next twelve days to celebrate the season of Christmas. One thing I am enjoying about this year, is that we decided to spread out the gifts for our children over the twelve days. They opened several things today, but they will get a small something each day during the Christmas season.

Beginning today, I will tell a short story and show a photo of the only collection I have. I have never been a collector of things (except clutter). I have never collected stamps or shoes or vintage napkins or any such thing. But a few weeks ago, I looked around my home and realized I have "collected" a number of beautiful quilts. I never intended to do this, it just happened. Quilts have come to mean a lot to me over the years. They symbolize home and warmth, friends and family, color and artistry.

The first quilt in this twelve-entry series is a Christmas quilt. My friend Pam Toon Akers made this for us as a wedding gift. She is a beautiful woman from Indiana that has learned to quilt and shared her gift with me several times.

The amount of love and time it took her to create this quilt is evident to us each year when we open the Christmas boxes and pull out this lovely blanket. All of the Christmas photos we have taken during our marriage have this quilt in the background.

I met Pam in the fourth grade at MacArthur Elementary School in Indianapolis. We were fast friends from the start. I received a call from Pam just this weekend saying she has been praying for us. Her Indiana twang sounded like home and love as I listened to her message. Thank you for your ongoing gift of love and friendship, Pam.