Reflections on Christmas

It has struck me as an adult how Christmas has lost its ‘magic’ to so many of us. How even last year, I found myself secretly wishing I could skip the season, followed by feelings of guilt and horror that I would think such a thing. As a Christian, even more so “shame on me!” But the reality is, Christian or not, many people are saddened by the holidays. Last year, I wrote “5 Things to Love about Fall & Winter” as a reminder to focus on the positive, hoping it would help someone else to reset their thinking as well.

After a tumultuous 2020 at best and a devastating one at worst for most people, we enter the Christmas season with a lot of mixed emotions.

In November, my grandma passed away. She was 93 years young, and her age had only started to really show these last few years. She was very agile and active her whole life, only slowing down these last years as her mind began to slip a little and her eyesight dimmed. Her sense of humor remained…and her love of Christmas. As I see the lights and decorations this year, I think of her, in her 80s, on a ladder on her front porch stringing lights around her porch columns as she did every year. As she aged, there were not as many lights, but there were always some and her enthusiasm never wavered. When I see signs that say, “I believe in Santa” and “Jesus is the Reason” I think of her, because she embodied both of those mantras more than anyone else I’ve ever known! My love of Christmas hymns and my knowledge of them as well as children’s Christmas songs most assuredly come from her.

And this year, my family and I enter the season without her.

For you, maybe it has been the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job or declining health or any number of discouraging and depressing things that have weighed you down this year.

Christmas represents the birthday of my Savior. Joy, peace, love, hope…these are the emotions Christmas is meant to evoke.

So how did we get so far off course?

The truth is, the things you are grieving over this Christmas are things that you have to live with and deal with each day. We think Christmas makes these things WORSE, but that’s just a thought. The good news is not that you can erase the sad parts of your life, the good news is, you can choose your thoughts.

I’m aware how much power our emotions have over us, and I’m not suggesting that if you think of unicorns and cotton candy all day long you will be happy and delighted 24/7.

I’m suggesting that happiness comes and goes, but joy is deeper than that.

You can be unhappy and have joy, peace, hope, and love.

You can be grieving and have joy, peace, hope, and love.

You can be struggling and have joy, peace, hope, and love.

You can be uncertain and have joy, peace, hope, and love.

You can miss someone this Christmas season and still enjoy Christmas.

You can FEEL all the things, but know that joy, peace, hope, and love are accessible to you.

And they are accessible because of Christmas.

Not December 25 exactly, but what it stands for.

A birthday.

A baby.

A baby that was subject to all the things babies are subject to as they grow: heat, cold, sadness, rejection, happiness, pain, bullies, skinned knees, fake friends, laughter, hunger, loss….

But He chose it.

Because it was the only way. He made Himself less, at the mercy of all the elements and people, because it was the best way to identify with you and the only way to set you free.

Your loss, rejection, pain…and your laughter, happiness, relationships.

He felt all of that, too.

We have lost sight of the baby.

We are consumed with the budget, the gifts, the sales, the hot items that we stand in line for on Black Fridays in the cold. Sometimes we only see the hustle and bustle and we don’t feel the love. We don’t feel any peace.

People say, ‘buy less,’ ‘simplify your schedule’…but there are places we have to be and expectations of gifts that weigh on us.

What would happen if we spent less? What would happen if we put a lot of thought into one heartfelt gift instead of so many around the tree? What if, instead of endless commitments, we took a lesson from 2020 and chose peaceful moments among our closest people?

What if we reset our priorities and set an example for the people around us?

What if we looked around and noticed what really matters, noticed that the Facebook posts that make us cry and rejoice are often the ones of the simplest, most beautiful examples of human kindness and love. I just saw a video last night of an elderly man practicing working out with a weight – his neighbor and family were perplexed. There was a picture he used for inspiration, but the viewer couldn’t see the picture until the end of the video – it was his granddaughter, and he was practicing so he could lift her so she could put the star on top of the Christmas tree.

Y’all, I sat in my living room, alone, at midnight, and wept.

And I thought about what we truly believe is beautiful. The things that really matter.

The things that bring us peace, joy, love, and hope.

It’s not the latest electronic, impeccable lattice on your apple pie, or a perfectly symmetrical Christmas tree.

Those things offer happiness, yes – but happiness is a fleeting emotion.

This season, pursue the things that stay in your heart longer than in your head.

The week after my Grandma died, Sam took me to Starbucks for a night out of the house and a cheer-me-up caramel brulee. The truck in front of us paid for our coffees. I have never had that happen to me before, and I have no idea who the people were. They didn’t know what it meant to me, the week I had had, or how I sat in the car at the Starbucks window and wept at the kindness of strangers in a world where we are told no one cares about anyone anymore.

That’s only true if WE let it be so.

Because we can show love. Love is always a choice. It doesn’t have a price tag.

Love is a flowering weed lovingly picked and offered by your child, a meal for someone in your neighborhood who’s been ill, a moment of your time for someone who’s lonely, a kind word, a smile, an encouragement…love never fails to make an imprint on the heart.

You were a part of the greatest example of love ever demonstrated. That baby in the manger agreed to come that way, knowing the cross loomed. His love for you was greater than the pain, the humiliation, the anguish, the betrayal…every day that He lived, every word that He said, and with His last breath, He taught us what love looks like. His love for you says loud and clear: you are wanted and you are loved.

All around you, there are thoughtful moments and kind people and blooming weeds and amazing sunsets – all love letters quietly louder than the tinsel and the commercials…if we will only notice.

Love is all the things that make each day beautiful, even when life is pretty messy.

I wrote 3 typewritten pages to read at my Grandma’s funeral. It was important to me but I didn’t know how I would possibly get through it. On that day, my voice faltered a time or two, but I made it through, because when I stood before the people gathered there, I experienced a peace that is not of this world.

I was still sad. I was still heartbroken. I was still devastated.

But I had peace.

My husband and I have been riding around at night looking at people’s Christmas lights. It was my suggestion that we do this – it’s a memory from my childhood, not a crystal clear memory, but a very warm and fuzzy one. We take random back roads, and I get excited when we come upon a house with lights.

It reminds me of my Grandma’s porch columns.

And more than once, I have fought back tears.

But in my heart, I feel pure joy at the sight of someone’s effort to make their space cheerful for Christmas – even on a rural road so far off the beaten path that most people will never see their efforts.

Joy and tears can live in the same moment.

My husband’s grandmother was a woman of great faith. She lost her only son (my husband’s father) and her husband the same year, a few months apart, when both had massive heart attacks. I will never forget her telling me that when it became too much to bear, she would pray and ask God to ease her burden…and He always did. Time and time again.

She didn’t say she stopped missing them, or that it wasn’t painful. She said He was there for her, and it made all the difference. She had hope.

Hope and pain can exist in the same body.

Whatever you FEEL this season, I’m not here to tell you it’s not real, or that there’s no validation for it.

I am here to tell you that there is hope.

There is hope for tomorrow.

There is hope for happiness.

There is hope for joy.

There is hope for peace in every situation.

There is hope for new, better opportunities.

There is hope for improved health.

There is hope for your children.

There is hope for your parents.

There is hope for your finances.

There is hope for your marriage.

There is hope that you WILL laugh again.

There is hope available to you every single day.

And his name is Jesus.

And this is his birthday.

So whatever you are struggling with this season, don’t let it be Christmas.

I have never thought much about the Advent season until this year, to be honest, but this year, in 2020, as we wait for Christmas, I feel differently about the season of anticipation.

I feel like we need, now more than ever, to focus our eyes on the hope, peace, joy, and love available to us, taking captive all our thoughts, being intentional with those thoughts and our energy and priorities, and rejoicing in a Savior who offers us all the things that cannot be taken away, regardless of our circumstances, the political climate, or a virus.

Merry Christmas, my friends; I wish you peace, joy, love, and hope.