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Minutes of Meetings with God |
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The Christmas Hippo ... |
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| The older that I get, the more ambivalent I become about Christmas.
On one hand, I like all the lights, the decorations, the food, the singing,
the celebrating with friends and family, the giving and getting of cards
and gifts, the special worship services, and the telling of the story of
the first Christmas; that is the "up-side" of Christmas for me.
On the other hand, there are times when the Christmas season feels empty, bleak, and just plain rushed and annoying. There are those moments when I get down on myself because ... it's Christmas time and I should "feel happy", but I don't. Some years, it is just very difficult for me to "get into the Christmas spirit." I don't think that I'm exactly a Scrooge ... I don't go around blurting out "Bah, Humbug!!!" However, I do find myself waxing nostalgic for "the magic of Christmas" that seems to have gotten lost somewhere with my long-gone childhood ... I do have a tendency to have "The Christmas Blues." Susie and I have already cut the three trees (two Spruces and a fir) that will be adorn our house. Each tree will receive special attention and special decorations. I will put the trees in the stands and then put on the lights. Susie does most of the rest. We took advantage of our recent warm weather to get our outside lights strung on the shrubs in front of the house. The house will soon definitely look like Christmas. And ... then things will start getting difficult for me. All of the stores will be a teeming mass of people ... there will be no parking places and long lines at the cash registers (even at the grocery store). Everyone will be in a dither (including me) about what to get whom for Christmas. People's driving will be terrible, and it won't be because of the cold, ice and snow. The radio stations will begin playing the "latest Christmas hits," most of which I find particularly annoying (the only recent "good" Christmas song that I can remember is: "I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."). I think that what bothers me the most is how we tend to celebrate Christmas in ways that emphasize giving things, getting things and having things. One of the sad effects of our ways of celebrating Christmas is that it throws into harsh contrast the situations of rich and poor in our nation ... Christmas in the U.S.A. has a way of rubbing the noses of the poor into what they don't have (while others do) and "all the goodies that they are missing out on." Christmas, more than any other time of the year divides us into "haves" and "have nots." Compared to the difficulty I have with that division, I guess I don't have much of a problem with Santa Claus and some of the other popular Christmas traditions. We can argue six ways 'til doomsday about the real meanings of Christmas ... about the reality of the miracles, the angels and the virgin birth. However, there is one meaning of Christmas that if we miss, then it seems to me that we've missed the whole thing. Christmas isn't about giving things, getting things, or having things ... Christmas isn't about "haves" and "have nots." Christmas isn't about differences among human beings ... Christmas is about bridging the horrible abyss between human beings and the Divine One to whom we owe our existence, between human beings and each other. Christmas is about recognizing that we human beings haven't done very well at finding God and becoming like God (doing our part to bridge the abyss), so God has done what takes to bridge the abyss by comingto look for us and to become like us. Christmas is about God coming for a visit to planet Earth ... incognito --- with identity concealed. Christmas is about God's brilliant disguise ... a disguise that tells us in no uncertain terms that God cherishes the very nature of human beings (God became like us to invite us to discover that of God in ourselves), God trusts human beings (God, as an infant, abandoned him-self to the care of a teenager ), and God loves every human being (from shepherds, who were often considered to be scoundrels at the bottom of the social heap, to kings, who were at the top of the social heap). Christmas is about God's love-work to bring us all together and to share the bounty of the entire cosmos with us ... there really is enough to go around, we just need to share. Now, to get those trees in the stands. |