So, This is Christmas

I have a love-hate relationship with the Christmas season. Obviously, I love it because of all that it represents—the birth of our savior, the coming of salvation, the fruition of a covenant of grace. I love decorating, watching cheesy Christmas movies, and eating way too many butter cookies. I love just about all the Christmas activities: the light shows, plays, ballets, markets, tree lightnings, all of it.

But herein lies the problem. By the end of December, I am exhausted and honestly just want it all to be over. By the time Christmas itself rolls around, I am kind of over it all. Every year I (and I guess many other people) tell themselves that this season they won’t over commit. They won’t spread themselves too thin. How many of us broke that promise this year, again? I feel like this year is especially hectic as most of us are trying to make up for missing so much last December.

So the big question and struggle for many of us is: how do we balance all of the meaningful and fun Christmas activities with our emotional and mental sanity? First off, I want to say that I do not have the ironclad answer for this question. But I wonder how much of it comes down to us placing higher values on certain times of the year over others. Think about it, I know I often get wrapped up in thinking, ‘it’s only Christmas for a few weeks, I have to make it special, make allllll the memories right now!’ We can get so wrapped up in trying to craft the perfect experience or memory that we can forget to actually experience that moment or be present for that memory.

Psalm 118 tells us that, “this is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (v.24). THIS day, THIS very day, is the day that the Lord made. God crafted each of our days, each of them is a blessing and a gift. A random Tuesday in February, any Thursday in May, and Christmas day. Each and everyone of them is the day that the Lord made, and we should rejoice in all of them.

What would that look like for us—to live with the same zeal we have on Christmas Eve on say, June 6? How might our outlook change if we saw every day as special and worthy of our full attention and passion? Would that make us less likely to overbook some parts of the year while we mindlessly skate through others? What would it look like to put the same importance we place on Christmas day on every day of the year? I am just as guilty of this as anyone (if not more so). I know far too often I go on auto-pilot for extended periods of time, only clicking things back on for what I deem as an important event.

What would it look like to be fully engaged every day? Would it balance out our lives more—help us move away from the peak and valley cycle of living one big event to the next? Honestly, I don’t know. But it is something I want to try. I want to try to genuinely view every day as a gift and as something with which I am meant to utilize for the glory of our God. Or perhaps to quote a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Let’s try to take that Christmastime specialness and zeal and import it to all the days of the year!