Well, it’s December and you’re starting
to stress out, aren’t you? I can feel the stress coming right through your
eyeballs as you read this.
The Christmas season, which officially began
the day after Halloween, is now in high gear, and with it comes the inevitable
stress of trying to cram ten pounds of Ho-ho-ho into a five-pound stocking. To
paraphrase an Andy Williams holiday classic, “It’s the most STRE-ESS-FUL time …
of the year!”
If you’re a person of faith, you have
the added stress of trying to incorporate a little of the religious origins of
this holy day into your holiday festivities. But things are so hectic, that
seems to be practically impossible, doesn’t it?
Nowadays the Christmas season is kind of
like being swept away by a raging flood. Every year we tell ourselves we’re not
going to get caught up in all the holiday nonsense, but then the season comes
rolling in and even though we try to hold our ground, we eventually lose our balance
and get washed downstream in a foaming maelstrom of too much food, too much
drink, too much shopping, too much decorating, too much cookie-baking, too much
wrapping, too much ugly Christmas sweater-ing, and too much “Grandma got run
over by a reindeer.” It’s just, well, too much.
The more hectic the Christmas season
becomes, the less the “reason for the season” is present, both in our lives and
in the culture. For example, in response to the threat of frivolous lawsuits a
decade or so ago, school choruses stopped singing religious carols during the
annual Christmas concert. But now they’re not even allowed to call it a
Christmas concert; it’s a “winter” concert. And now they can’t even sing
non-religious holiday songs, like Rudolph and Frosty, because apparently the
lawyers for various atheist groups noticed that the nativity passages in Luke’s
gospel are just teeming with red-nosed reindeer and talking snowmen.
The less the Lord is present in
Christmas, I’ve observed, the more our culture fills the void with
stress-inducing holiday season silliness.
When the Person whose birthday we
celebrate on December 25th was stressed-out and exhausted, He went up to the
hills for some peace and quiet and prayer. When we’re about to be swept away by
a flood (either real or metaphorical), we too need to head for the hills. We
need to make some time for peace and quiet and prayer.
Oh sure, easy to say, but how do we make
time when there already isn’t enough time to do all the holiday things everyone
expects? Ah ha! Martha, Martha, you are worried and anxious about many things,
but only one thing is needed. (Recognize that line? Someone pretty important
said it a long time ago.)
The key to finding some peaceful time,
which will allow us to keep the first syllable of Christmas in Christmas, is to
change the expectations. Make it clear to your friends and loved ones that
you’re not playing the game this year. Tell them you are refusing to get swept
away by the raging current of non-religious folderol that has become such a part
of the modern, secular Christmas season.
Now, I’m not advising that you go all
Scrooge on everybody. Go ahead and put up a tree, buy a few presents, eat some
cookies, and play the Bing Crosby CD. But simply make it clear that faith and
prayer are the most important aspects of this season. You just might be
surprised at how many of your friends and loved ones want to join you on the quiet
and prayerful high ground, away from the flood.
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