Upstairs in my Cape Cod home, we utilized the space behind the knee-walls to create long, well lit storage bays, the largest of which is in my den behind my sofa. Christmas lives up there -- inside the many tubs and boxes. It’s always a special time to crawl in and pull out each tub, box and angel. Because they are all marked indicating which ones will decorate the upstairs, the downstairs, the porch and the lawn, I sort and stack them at the top of the stairs before making the necessary trips down, one load after another. There is something magical as I open and unwrap each fragile glass ball, porcelain King, or china angel. I look lovingly at each item as I unpack them one-by-one as if I had never seen them before. Nothing but joy do I feel as I as I work away placing each item in its designated spot. I take great pride in decorating my tree as if it were a show piece with its extreme use of lights and decorations. I spend two days decorating the tree and house, and another two days decorating the porch and lawn . . . and then I sit. I sit with a cup of hot cider, or coffee and just look at beauty that an ordinary house it transformed into when the extra-ordinariness of Christmas arrives.
I can image the same joy filled the heart of the creator as God placed each tree, planted each flower with the words “tulips, you go here and day-lilies, you go there.” I imagine all of heaven was a-buzz as the world we know was transformed from an ordinary void of chaos into something as spectacular as mountains, lakes, valleys and deserts. I imagine God sitting back on day number eight and admiring all that was created … you and me!
Christmas – made up of two simple yet profoundly spectacular words, Christ and mas. Christ, the miracle and gift of Christmas, and “mas(s),” that service observed in worship of the king of Kings. God’s very self, embracing the brokenness of creation as the babe in the manger later stretched forth arms on wooden beams in undeserved sacrifice. Magical, mystical, and the mysterious work of love. Is there anything ordinary about Christmas? Anything ordinary about that kind of love? Anything ordinary about the extra-ordinariness of the beauty of this season?
This year, not one tub came down the stairs. No outdoor lights, no greenery on the white porch railing, no manger scene on the lawn. No Christmas tree, no silver kings or brightly colored angels … nothing but a wreath on the door, a painted antique sled on the porch, a vase of poinsettias on the granite island in the kitchen and a 12 inch wooden tree on the piano. This year an over-extended schedule necessitated the simplicity of Christmas for me. At first, I stressed about what it meant to have Christmas without all the trappings. I wondered if I would be considered, by my neighbors, a scrooge or simply a slacker! I thought that perhaps it wouldn’t feel like Christmas at all. I found myself judging Christmas by my ability to manage the vast chaos that swirled around me and my inability to call all of that into some kind of order, trappings and all. And then, as I lamented the reality that I could no longer don the “super-woman” cape and make it all happen, God spoke.
The still small voice of my redeemer God, the soon coming King, broke through the haze of condemnation and question that warped my Christmas spirit -- with words of “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace among those whom He favors!” (Luke 2:14)
I was reminded that there is something ordinary about Christmas after all. It’s pretty ordinary that we women tend to place extreme expectations upon ourselves, especially during this extra-ordinary season. We expect to be able to decorate the house, bake for church, school and office, wrap individually every pack of gum we plan to put into stockings, prepare a Paula Dean type Christmas feast, and make memories other than negative ones. We expect to figure out how to stretch every penny, write everyone we’ve ever known a Christmas card, and get them all out on time. We expect that we should be able to order our world with efficiency and it goes without saying, that is must be done with excellence! Bah-humbug! Christmas is about realizing that we are not da-vine, we are just da-branch! When we find ourselves so over-functioning that Christmas is measured by our doing . . . we come into the reality that we are not abiding in the vine . . . when that happens, we are not glorifying God in the highest heaven, and there is no peace for us, on the earth. Perhaps this year, we need to simplify in order to glorify! Perhaps this year, we need to realize the trap in all the trappings, and be set free from all the doing, in order that we might be found among the favored so that peace on earth would abound in our homes. Christmas is about the goodness of God come down to man. It’s about the babe born of a virgin, placed in a manger, hung on a cross, and rose from the dead! Ladies, beware of the trap in the trappings, and have a very Merry Christmas!
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