Before I get too far into a New Year and the tree comes down, I usually spend some time reflecting on the Christmas past. This year I've finally admitted what I've been afraid to admit for so long.
Christmas is not "the most wonderful time of the year." Not for me, anyway.
It's hard to admit. I don't want to sound like a Scrooge, muttering "Bah, humbug" under my breath, then feeling guilty about being unsentimental. I understand the sadness that so many feel when a loved one has died or a marriage has ended; it certainly wasn't a Merry Christmas for the residents of Newtown. But even as an ordinary month, I just can't find and maintain some unique joy every single day.
It's too much work.
For far too many years I've tried to recapture, even if just for a moment, the magic excitement of my childhood Christmases. The lights seemed prettier then, the trees taller, the gifts more enticing, the anticipation more palpable. We counted down the days - "T minus 8!" - and found it hard to sleep. I know that's a typical childhood experience of Christmas, and as I got older it began to slip away.
So I looked up old childhood LPs on CD. I re-started some traditions that I'd forgotten. I tried to gather small groups for caroling and even rang the bell for the Salvation Army (which I did as a Kiwanis kid). I wanted scenes around the fireplace with my closest friends, passing around the coffee and the pumpkin pie. When our boys were in that "sweet spot" of childhood it came back vicariously. Now it's a season where again my emotional expectations have become - well, burdensome.
What I have found is that, in the midst of a month that's always more demanding than the other eleven, there are moments of light that break through with a special holiness. The Burke Family Christmas was one of those this year: the families, the children, the music, the sheer grace of the Praise Hula Dancers fed my soul powerfully in those post-Newtown days. An evening with my sons was another. The Christmas Eve services - especially the children's pageant and "O Holy Night" - were another. Most everything else seemed just ordinary - which in the Christmas hype is blasphemous.
But when I go back to Scripture, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be! Maybe the evening of Jesus' birth really was that glorious - with light and angels and awestruck shepherds and a heavenly chorus. But inside the stable I think it was anything but.
The straw - damp and ordinary. The animals - loud and ordinary. The atmosphere - smelly and ordinary. The baby - wet, colicky, cold, fragile - a lot of work. The whole month leading up to that night wasn't clean and holy and glorious by a long shot. That's not the Christmas message.
The message is that the light shines out through the darkness - in the midst of the ordinary - and that light will never be totally swallowed up by it. The message I hear in a fresh way now is that the monthly work of Christmas - buying and wrapping, cooking and decorating, planning and preparing, writing and mailing - is often burdensome. (Joseph and Mary's month before wasn't all that magical and giddy either! ) But the flicker and flash of that light - the glimpse of grace in church, the moment at the table, the laugh in the car, the smile through the sadness - that's what we celebrate.
If I get this and live it, I can put fewer burdens on the entire month and what I wish it could be again. I could set my expectations aside and welcome instead what God does give. And I think what God will give is just the flicker, just the glimpse.
Next year there may only be two or three of those in the whole month. But I want that to be enough to remind me of the heart of Christmas. Ordinary darkness is not vanquished. But "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." That's what I will wait for.
Now May & June - that's the most wonderful time of the year!
I think.
Pastor Larry
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