As we
head into the season of Advent, the time of preparing for Christmas,
I thought I would share this piece I wrote some years ago about some
of the meanings of Christmas...
Christmas Is…
Christmas is carols and children. At
Christmas time the child-like senses of wonder and acceptance are
awakened in us. As we sing the carols and tell the story we are
reminded of our childhood memories. The gifts and the foods bring
out the child in all of us. The mystery of the stories (either Jesus
or Santa) challenges us to move past adult rationalism. Christmas
calls us to be child-like once again.
Christmas is waiting and hoping. When
will Santa come? When can I open my presents? When will the baby be
born? When will the world be better? When will things be right
again? We wait and we wait. But we wait with hope. Christmas
reminds us to be people of hopeful expectation. Christmas reminds us
to hope for the future. Hope is born at Christmas, and so we wait
for birth.
Christmas is chaos and calm. There is
so much to fit into the month. Parties and concerts and shopping and
baking and special church services. Oh my! Chaos is part of
Christmas. But there is calm too. There is the peace of the
Christmas snow sifting down. There is the silence of the frosty
nights. There are both in our story too. The calm of the
traditional vision of the manger is shattered by the chaos of a
newborn’s cries and the violence of an oppressive world. Christmas
comes in the midst of our lives with chaos and calmness.
Christmas is life changing. Some of
the chaos of Christmas is because if we take Christmas and the story
of the baby in the manger seriously Christmas is life-changing.
Birth means that the life beforehand will die. Life will never be
the same again, for parent, for child, for everybody associated with
the child. At Christmas we mark not just the birth of a child but of
a whole new world. And while we wait with hopeful expectation for
that birth, we also wonder what will need to die so that the birthing
process comes to full potential. Christmas is life and world
changing.
Christmas is light in the darkness.
Even in the chaos there is calm. Even in the fear of change there is
hope. There is hope because Christmas reminds us of light in the
darkest times. It is Christmas. The nights are long and cold in
midwinter. But then we hear a tale of light, we hear that those who
walk in times of darkness will have light shined on them. The world
will be changed. New life will be born. There is light and there is
hope.
That’s what Christmas is Charlie
Brown.
From the Waldie household to all of
yours, a Merry Christmas.
And God Bless Us, Every One!
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