Christmas resolutions

January 9

It’s the second week of January.  The thermometer said -4 degrees F, and I’m told this is normal for this time of year.  Snow in bushels should be coming soon.  School is back in session.  “Tax information” is beginning to show up in our mailbox. The Boo has just finished her first basketball tournament of the year (3 losses, but fundamentals improved noticeably).  And we are getting used to writing 2020 whenever we have to sign something.  I don’t know; that last seemed to come pretty naturally this time.  Maybe the repetition makes it easier.  

Fact is, I’d like to spend a little more time basking in the light of Christmas before I move into 2020.  That this year is a presidential election year, with all the attending chaos, is only one of my reasons.  I felt a little cheated by the Christmas season this year, and not just because it was short.  A lot of people have lamented the shortness to me.   For some reason, Christmas seemed more vacuous to me than it has previously.  (Great word, vacuous.  It conjures up echoes of echoes.)

I can’t blame this emptiness on being separated from my family for the third year in a row.  And I don’t think the stress of planning Advent and Christmas while Seth was being ordained and installed was the only culprit either.  This is something I’ve been feeling for a while now.  Christmas is not what it’s supposed to be anymore.  

So what is Christmas supposed to be?  Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what  Christmas is all about?  

Sure, Charlie Brown.  I can tell you:  Peace on earth and good will to men on whom His favor rests.  

Okay, so what does that mean?  

Well, peace is a multi-faceted idea.  I am far from the first Christian blogger to bring up the word shalom, but that’s what we’re going for here.  Rest, balance, provision, security, sustainability, comfort.  Sitting at the window and watching the weather roll in, but knowing that you and yours are well taken care of, so you can enjoy the beauty of the storm.  The satisfaction of a meal well made, a job well done, a rest well earned along with the joy of knowing that there will be a tomorrow.  “God’s in heaven, all’s right with the world.”  

And good will is desiring the best possible outcome for everybody, and acting toward it, because will always involves at least the intention of doing something.    

Look back on your holiday.  Was something lacking?  I’ve already expressed that something was lacking in mine. Did your holiday do anything to make peace and good will happen?  Did it do anything to injure the peace and good will?  Were peace and good will at the heart of it?  

Let’s do a mental exercise: tell me what you think of when you think of Christmas.  I can tell you what I think of: car commercials.  They’re so common, they’re becoming indistinguishable.  And Star Wars premieres, though with the sliding success of their latest, that should be over for a while.  Shopping, of course, and deciding if we were going to have a real tree.   There’s nothing inherently sinful in any of these things, even Star Wars, but I think we can agree that they don’t advance the Christmas spirit that we’d like to see.  

And then on the religious front, I think about Christmas carols and candlelight services and getting all the decorations up in church.  We had a new nativity scene this year.  It’s gorgeous, but it’s huge (all the way from the pulpit to the organ), and it kind of illustrates my point. It’s a beautiful thing, an essentially Christmassy thing (you can’t get much more Christmassy than the Holy Family in Renaissance form with gold trim), but is it doing what Christmas is supposed to do?  It could be.  Did we ask?  

  

Simply put, Christmas, along with many other holidays, seems to be getting more and more inwardly focused. We are encouraged to explosive extravagance.   Maybe that’s Pinterest’s fault.  Maybe it’s the greeting card and ornament industry’s influence, but Christmas has gotten too cute and too bright for its own good.  It’s all festivity, a lot of it is shallow festivity, and we are losing the peace on earth and good will toward men.  Then, in the process, we are expanding our waists, hurting our budgets, and inducing anxiety in our children by giving them too many things.  Crazy, huh?  What exactly are we trying to accomplish with all this?  

 I really think that a lot of people are looking to celebrate Christmas differently.  I see the headlines as I scroll through Facebook. Even beyond the usual “15 Best Gifts for Your Techie Friends,” I see “It’s okay to not feel the festivity.”  “Connecting with the Peace of Christmas.”  “How to have a sustainable Christmas.”  “We know what’s missing from your holiday season.”   So I know that people are feeling this discrepancy, but if they’re anything like me, I don’t think they know what to do.  

This isn’t just a call to put Christ back in Christmas because I’m pretty sure most of my audience have Him there, somewhere.  It’s more of a reflection on where Christ is in our Christmas, and what HIs presence is doing.    What is essential to Him showing Himself, and what is just distraction?  If China hacked the Internet so none of your presents arrived,  or everyone at your house came down with a mild stomach flu (like we did this year), or the aging VCR ate your only copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, or Grandma’s fudge recipe was declared taboo for your lactose intolerant relatives,  could you still have Christmas?  And what would it do?  

Why is this relevant in January?  Well there are some of us who are trying to lose the Christmas weight and pay off the Christmas debt.  Those good reasons to start thinking about what Christmas is supposed to be doing and how we can reevaluate our approach.  But also, I think some delayed waiting and reflecting might be good for us.  I don’t know about you, but my Advent season is full.  Between making Christmas happen at home and helping Christmas happen at church, I don’t have a lot of time to reflect on what is actually valuable in Christmas and make that show up in the celebration of it.  It takes time to make habits;  it takes powerful reasons to change habits, and right now, all I know for certain is that I’d really like to make a change.  

So for the next twelve months, interspersed with news and bits of Lady Julian, I’m going to be researching and reflecting on Christmas.  All things Christmas. I welcome feedback: questions, counter arguments, suggestions.