I’m always looking for ways to tell the Christmas story and make the holidays special. For years, my family shared a special recipe for our Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus cake for Christmas Eve after we came home from church. A single white candle was blown out by the youngest capable child. We started this tradition with other families and entire church congregations.
Yesterday at Glenbrooke Senior Center, we made a sandwich bag “trail mix,” with item(s) representing all parts…..
From my book, Advent Adventure, we begin the celebration of four Sundays before Christmas. 
THE ADVENT WREATH
The four Sundays before Christmas are times of celebration with the Advent Wreath ceremony. If Christmas falls on the weekend, this can be the fifth Sunday. Each year’s dates will be different. The Christ Candle is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, or both, symbolic of…..
MY THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION
Betty Whitaker Jackson
On this day of the year we know as Thanksgiving
’Though every day in my prayers I remember
To show attitude’s gratitude to practice thanksliving
This day is special, a specified moment
For success’s excesses our homage to pay.
Tradition demands we go back to the Pilgrims
Whose very survival was divine intervention,
We collectively remember their daily struggles and trials
Through cold, heat, and danger and daily encounters
That magnified reliance…..
Adventt is a season of “Looking Forward.” We look forward to Christmas. We look forward eagerly to the return of Jesus Christ on the last day to His triumphal entry and the Peaceable Kingdom.
I have written a book called Advent Adventure, with scriptures, hymns, and symbols to help families prepare for Christmas and understand both the Old Testament prophecy and the traditional church symbols of our faith. The Old Testament ornaments, with patterns you can reproduce, are called Jesse…..
As Advent approaches, show your family the true message of Christmas through prophesy and the symbols of the historic church through my book Advent Adventure. Also included are four scriptural services for lighting the Advent wreath candle the Sundays before Christmas. Get your copy by going to my website at www.bettyjackson.net and/or ordering from the Betty Whitaker Jackson search on Amazon.com. Make sure your family knows the REAL reason for the season and the historic/spiritual significance of its celebration.
Usually in November, I am writing daily for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. This year has been a planned hiatus.
Let me recount my November.
I succeeded in getting my sister relocated from New York to Florida, no easy task. She is now living in a senior residence facility ten minutes from my home. In the first week there, she fell twice, visited both local hospitals, spent three weeks then in a rehabilitation facility, and has just this week returned…..
I have pledged to not use this forum to represent or speak against a political candidate, and so far have kept this pledge. But, as a wordsmith and student of history, I can, and will define some terms to try to make sense of the chaos.
#1. Our Constitution set up three branches of government so they could operate the keep checks and balances on each other. We are choosing those we hope who can keep their duties as executives,…..
During the last several years, I have pursued a goal to achieve a prize offered by the Space Coast Writers’ Guild, the ARGO award, presented for the best novel written in the last two years, primarily set in Florida. After participating in the National Novel Writing Month goal of completing fifteen-hundred word drafts during succeeding Novembers, I will turn my efforts to another pursuit I’ve procrastinated about and put off far too long.
I have it on pretty good authority…..
A quick view of the past three weeks:
Dottie arrived October 2nd to live at Century Oaks Retirement Community in Melbourne. It was, at first glance, a welcoming time. We hadn’t been together for years. Although I had tried to convince her to become part of an assisted living arrangement for about three years, she was adamant about keeping her home and remaining independent. When she was scheduled for open heart surgery last October, the doctors said she would not…..
BETTY WHITAKER JACKSON
Thanks, Christopher Columbus
Remember the rhyme we learned in grade school? “In 1400 and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”? We heard about early voyages by Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, and more recently by Chinese and Muslims. The “Age of Discovery” inspires us to think about all the discoveries mankind has made throughout the ages.
It comes as no surprise that we have idealized many of these “old stories,” and now critics try to negate the courage and…..