I am tired of hearing the phrase “remember the reason for the season.”  I find it kind of funny when Christian’s focus their “righteous outrage” on stores who fail to say “Merry Christmas.”  I think that our attempts to “de-commodify” this holiday through protest or by using pithy phrases is, quite possibly, the exact wrong way to go about raising awareness (unless we want to raise the awareness that some Christians can be pains in the ass).  In truth, I like that I get to open a couple of presents because even if they usually do turn out to be the wrong size, or color, or style, or all three, I usually get something that I like, at least a little.  Besides, I am learning that, especially with this holiday, it really is the thought that counts.  My understanding of the holiday has changed as I have come to realize that there are other things in my own life that I would rather focus on.  When I was a kid, I used to look forward to Christmas because it meant eggnog and the smell of pine trees.  The thing is, while I still like to sit in the dark and look at the twinkling lights of a tree, these days eggnog makes me a little sick.  My tastes have changed as I have gotten older and, while some parts of my youthful celebration of Christmas turned out to be perennial and evergreen, at some point I came to realize that the holiday had become too artificially sweet.

Advent is, after all, a season of transition.  This is the time of darkness, when the light leaves our lives before it begins its slow return.  This season balances hope against fear, sets life against death, and celebrates God’s grace made present now, here.  In this season, I look back on my year and I see the good and the bad, and take stock of sin and grace.  I see there is hope for me even after rejecting someone’s love for me, or failing to share my love with others.  I know my own darkness (the muddiness of selfish desires, the corruptibility of my own impulses), and the constant struggle to bring life into this world, can be very painful.  I remember my death and know that I will someday dry up and blow away.  I feel life, though, with its desires and hopes urging me towards some unseen end.  I am aware that I often have no idea what I am doing, where I am going, how I will get there, when it will end, and that I am always looking for something that will help me understand.  I am aware that I am flesh and that God’s word lives and moves in me.  I am aware that I am not altogether worthy of his presence, but that I am made worthy by the Presence in me.  With Advent, I can experience the grace of my hopes for a fuller, more grace-filled (and graceful) expression of who I am in relationship to others.  I then see that God’s word is in me, is transforming me, is leading me in a constant state of transition.  I see that we are all being transformed by the experience of Christ in our lives.  This broken world was a wreck long before shopping malls and secularized holidays, and even when we solve our current problems, more problems will emerge.  Still, even as I see the darkness, I know the sun will return.  Without the long stillness of the advent season, there is no Christmas.

I know we have heard it before, but let’s hear it again: Christmas is not about things.  This time, though, I know that I can hear it without feeling like people are telling me what I should be doing on Christmas.  I want this season to be about the celebration of light overcoming darkness, the ebb-and-flow of life and death, and the celebration of God’s movement in me emerging into the world.  I can choose to focus, not just on the joy of Christ, but also on the pain of being that Jesus took part in.  I can recognize myself in the long darkness, begging for light to break the chilled grip of death.  I can find ways to celebrate the goodness that is born into my family or by my friends, even in the midst of the many disappointments that entered into our lives this year.  I can do something that provides a sense of life’s goodness, the goodness of the incarnation of the Spirit that we all share.  I know, now, that we are all created beings, people who had no hand in our own creation, and that we are all alive, now, together.  I know that we need one another, that we are members of the same body, that we are all people bearing the word of God.  I see that there is a way to share in the experience of loving others, even the people I do not really want to love.  I do not have to force myself into having a great time in the “hap, hap, happiest season of all.”  Rather, I can just be silent, look to the life I have been given, and wait as the light begins to emerge once more.

Photo: ““It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”” by “LensENVY” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

No related posts.