The Holiday Season

Christmas is such an interesting holiday and season when you're a Christian... it can be controversial. What Christmas represents is so varied and complex! So as I reflect on the Christmas seasons of my life, I find that I'm pretty happy with my conclusions about how I feel about December.
As a child, Christmas was about Santa/gifts - and that was a fun and exciting way to spend December. Eventually Santa left the picture, which was a somewhat sad right of passage, but there were still plenty of gifts, so it was an easy disappointment to recover from. Sometime in college, the gifts became a little less worthy of the Christmas season excitement, so I had to generate the appropriate level of Christmas joy a new way. I went with the 'time spent with family and friends' option. Also good. But you know, people are imperfect - and even my blessed family relationships couldn't seem to reliably produce the 'comfort and joy' on Christmas day that years of expectation dictates. So, turning to seasonal lawn ornaments for direction, I considered 'Jesus is the reason for season'. But I could never quite buy into this one, because look at the Christmas celebration! Jesus is clearly not the reason for the season to the majority - significant majority - of people in our culture celebrating this season. The consumerism, the materialism, the debt incurred, the stress... none of that points to Jesus.
But here's where I land - I remember the advent banner that hung every year in the church I grew up in. And I may not remember what all four candles stood for, but I remember the one that said 'watch'. On Christmas Eve in America, we watch for Santa. But in my heart I remember to watch for my Savior. At Christmas, I remember when Jesus came to earth, and I let my life be changed remembering he will come again.
So how will this impact my celebration of the Christmas season? I love Christmas trees. I love Christmas cookies. I love gift giving. I like getting gifts! You know what I love all year long? Jesus. I love that I worship a God who embraces me in all my weaknesses and sacrificed ultimately to bring me into relationship with him, and eventually into eternity with him. In order to bring that into the excitement and joy advertised in this celebration each year, I want to offer service. Jason and I have decided to make acts of service a part of this time of year. We want to balance out the getting with giving for ourselves as well as our daughter. We're not going to cut out Christmas trees, or gifts, or even Santa necessarily - we're going to enjoy those things, but we're not going to put our hope in them or be consumed by them. My goal is to not prioritize any of those things over the peace offered to us all year long. And in my heart, I'm going to nurture the realization that Jesus came to earth humbly with a purpose years and years ago - and he will come again and take me home with him. So rather than store up treasures on earth I want to remember store up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6). And I'm really excited about learning more about what that means as Jason and I read Randy Alcorn's 'The Treasure Principle'.
You'll probably hear more about it too, if you keep reading this blog ;-)
So there you go - those are my current conclusions about the chaotic value messages Christmas can send us. And you're lucky enough to know them if you chose to read this :-) (I'm pretty sure Dallas agress with me, that's why he's pictured)!