December Journal, First Sunday after Christmas

We are in the middle of Christmastide, those twelve glorious days of Christmas ending on Epiphany, January 6.

I have celebrated seventy-eight Christmases on this good earth. If I don’t remember each one, they remember me. 

With each year I have added another layer, another garment, to my Christmas past to create my Christmas present, which becomes indeed a yearly present presented to my heart, mind, and soul. The past does this to the present if we pay attention, or even if we don’t, for today’s Christmas is partly the memories of earlier ones and perhaps even the anticipation of ones to come.

Thus rituals and traditions color our world. We sing the same songs and add new ones. We decorate our homes as if a king were arriving, for indeed he is, and did arrive on Christmas Day. We turn earlier saints into messengers, and invite Saint Nicholas to gift us, arrive on the roof and come down through the chimney to place delicacies in our giant stockings hung with care in hopes he will be there. 

We build anticipation in the weeks before, trying to be good, greeting one another with holiday cheer, wearing holiday colors and hats and tees, singing about a reindeer named Rudolph with a red nose who was humble and then great, or so the story goes.

We prepared for Christmas by thinking of others, teaching our hearts to expand to include another in our thoughts and plans. We bake for them, give them gifts that are wrapped in bright paper with shiny and curly ribbon, so that the joy becomes even more special for it has been hidden, as Jesus is hidden in history and mankind’s retelling.

In these rituals we tell the story of God becoming Man and walking among us. The story is too fantastic to tell. It is too amazing to fathom. So we tell it in our preparations, in our humble human attempts to shine the light on the glory of God and the laughter of his love.

Like Our Lord, Saint Nicholas comes down from stary skies and gives us wonderful gifts. The gifts do not compare to the gift of Christ and Eternity, the gift of God and incarnation, the gift of life over death, joy over sorrow. They do not compare, but they remain our meager attempt to reveal Christmas, the birth of the Son of God, the Messiah, the long awaited one here to set us free from our own captivity of self.

And so we try to be like Saint Nicholas and give gifts and reflect Our Lord Jesus who gave himself to us.

And we try to be like the angels and sing to him in his manger. We sing of the miracle and mystery of that unlikely birth, we harken to the herald angels singing glory to the newborn king, we sing of a silent and holy night when away in the manger there was no crib for his bed, we tell of the little town of Bethlehem and what happened on that midnight clear when the glorious song of old was heard as angels touched their harps of gold, for Christ is born of Mary, and while mortals sleep, the stars proclaim the birth and peace to men on earth.

Indeed, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Love of You and Me, was born that night over two thousand years ago, and today we sing carols layered upon earlier carols, as humankind tries to express the inexpressible with words and melody.

We teach our children the songs, so that they will teach their children. To help them remember, we dress them to play parts in a stable in Bethlehem. We clothe them with the story of the Christ Child. They act out the greatest story ever told, and each year they add to their own library of Christmas rituals and traditions.

And so I have been graced with seventy-eight years of Christmases. The time is rich and glorious and I wear a tapestried robe of many colors and notes and words. I live out what I have been given, a humble life of gilded mystery and miracle, for each day brings its own gifts of healing, seeing, hearing, being. Every minute is birthed by Christ. We breathe Christmas all year, birthing this Bethlehem child who births us.

We follow the star of Christmas and find ourselves at the cross of Easter. In this journey in time, we learn to love as God loves us, wrapping our hearts with the bright ribbons of Christ, to give ourselves to one another.