Well, no, I don’t want to sound like Scrooge, and I honestly do love Christmas, both the sacred and the secular, but really, one must admit that it is a delight to get past the annual Santa festival out there, the “ songs playing before Thanksgiving, that special song that you love most of all in November and can’t stand by the end of December, the noise, the crowds, the determined eyes and clenched jaws of shoppers, the “oh, no!” stomach-dropping realization that there is one more thing that you must go back to the grocery store for on Christmas Eve, the groaning, “Why, oh why, do I always forget the eggnog?” and maybe you make it to a Christmas Eve service or a Christmas morning service and sigh an exhausted sigh in the pew, you so want to clear your mind of the myriad of holiday details and spend quality time with your family and with the baby in the manger who was born so that He could die and bring us all back home.
That is what it is all about, right? and you do want to feel the incarnation of God in the world, how glorious and marvelous and wonderful it was . . . is . . . and, oh my goodness, why can’t I be calm?
Ah, take a deep breath! Christmas is over, the battle is won, in more ways than one. Remember that “no ear may hear his coming” and that may be why the noise of Christmas is so overwhelming. We know that we should be listening for His arrival, but there is simply too much clamoring and clanging.
Please give yourself a gift in this new year: take time to sit quietly and listen. “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.”
The Redeemer of the world arrived quietly, with no fanfare or notice except to a few, from simple shepherds to wise men, a sign that this birth belonged to everyone if they chose to acknowledge it. “Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.” Join me, meek souls, and softly and tenderly feel the peace of the Christ child. May we feel His grace working in our hearts, our families, and our world this year.
