Christmas Car Wreck

The total num­ber of stress points for the process of Christ­mas is the same as hav­ing a fairly seri­ous auto­mo­bile acci­dent. No won­der Jan­u­ary is seen as a recov­ery month — and it needs to be. Recov­ery some­times spills over into Feb­ru­ary. Many peo­ple pay on their charge cards well into sum­mer. Christ­mas has become quite an ordeal.

I did not send out Christ­mas cards this year, but I am appre­cia­tive of those that have. My gifts and cards are my daily arti­cles and gift-actions all year long. Though I am a lit­tle more aware of the Incar­na­tion dur­ing this sea­son, I cel­e­brate the pres­ence of God in Christ in my life and the lives of oth­ers each day of the year. It is a mat­ter of style I sup­pose. My gifts are a gen­eral gen­eros­ity with­out rib­bons and bows. I am cer­tainly no Grinch, but I work to lower Christ­mas stress in my life (which is my Christ­mas gift to myself).

Christ­mas is for peo­ple — not peo­ple for Christ­mas. When joys become bur­dens, some­thing has got­ten out of bal­ance. When expres­sion becomes per­for­mance or when cel­e­bra­tion becomes a task that keeps you awake at night, there has been a loss of per­spec­tive. If my ser­mons carry a need to impress oth­ers, rather than pri­mar­ily point­ing to God, my ego has taken over and my soul has been cheated.

It is dif­fi­cult to keep pro­grams from becom­ing taskmas­ters. Doing things for effect instead affir­ma­tion often fuels addic­tive­ness. Get off the stage and go find the lilies of the field (some­thing I remind myself to do con­stantly). Cel­e­brate the true spirit of Christ­mas by not cel­e­brat­ing it so much. Sim­plic­ity has its mer­its and rewards. Remem­ber that it is about an almost pen­ni­less car­pen­ter and his bride-to-be hav­ing a baby in a barn on their way to the tax office.

That image beck­ons my heart to humil­ity, sim­plic­ity, joy, and the real­iza­tion that Christ­mas is about the ignored as much as it is about what is in the spot­light. The baby Jesus will be the cen­ter of atten­tion for a while, and then the rou­tines of life will take over. His pri­vate years were just as impor­tant as his pub­lic ones. Bal­ance is paramount.

Merry Christ­mas! May you receive gifts from your­self to your­self that include breath­ing, time, and a sense of wonder!