Ben’s December Letter
Dear friends in Christ,
It’s here—the “most wonderful time of the year”. While at church I will spend four Sundays reining in the holiday spirit by insisting on the watchful, patient waiting of the Advent season, the world outside has been on to Christmas time since before Thanksgiving. The race is on, and at the beginning of December many of us already have gifts purchased, decorations up, and cards ready to mail. And that makes sense: if those things aren’t completed early, they begin to conflict with the packed schedules of Christmas parties, family gatherings, and cookie baking that define the season. I enjoy the Christmas season well enough, but I’ll admit that I don’t much enjoy the busyness or the expense of this month; and I have come to really dislike the pressure that exists around so much of it.
Yes, pressure. The pressure to find the perfect gift, or to match the warmth of our childhood Christmases. The pressure to appear festive, regardless of whatever else life is throwing our way in a given year. The pressure to change the whole house for a month; the pressure to socialize when the cold and the darkness make many of us want to hibernate instead. I suspect you know the pressure well, and if you don’t…ask someone close to you about it. They know.
The first Christmas was not without pressure (especially for Mary, traveling pregnant near-term). But I’m struck when I think of it how unplanned, chaotic, and unadorned it was. There is no holiday, merely a journey to pay taxes. There is no cozy, well-decorated home; only a barn in a crowded village that must be an awful place to sleep, let alone deliver a child. There are guests—strangers arriving with livestock to visit a newborn, foreign sages bringing expensive gifts the recipient is too young to use (and arriving weeks after the other guests, to boot). There is music, but only the shepherds hear the angels singing. No one mentions any food at all. No one except the angels are having a good time. Frankly it all seems a little miserable.
And still, Jesus is born. Heaven and Earth meet in an infant whose life will be to reconcile. Prophecies are fulfilled amid the mess and the anxiety. If you are looking for perfect in the story, you find it only in the Christ-child. The rest is unplanned and uncomfortable, but still unparalleled. The perfect part was covered when Mary gave birth. The rest was extra.
Consider this your Christmas-time reminder: if nothing comes out perfectly, Jesus is born nonetheless. If every gift misses its mark, if every party is a disaster, if the decorations are tacky and the cookies all burnt, if the company is bad or non-existent, if the cards arrive on December 26…we still rejoice. The Word has still become flesh and dwelt among us; the perfect part is covered.
I wish you a beautiful December, but not a perfect one. Because aside from Jesus…perfect would be so unlike that first Christmas in Bethlehem…
In expectation,
Rev. Ben