For Those Who Find Christmas Hard

photo courtesy of Catholic Diocese of Saginaw /flickr

She came in and slumped down in her chair.“I hate Christmas,” she said.” I just hate Christmas. We don’t have enough money. My husband and I had another fight about if we’ll spend Christmas with his parents or mine.  The kids are grumpy andI I have zero heart for shopping. I just hate the season.”

As soon as she left the phone rang. .”I don’t think I will make it through the next few weeks. We’re separated and it’s awful. What will I tell the kids? If I had a magic wand—I’d just as soon make Christmas disappear. Comfort and joy—whatever happened to that?”

Good question: What did happen to comfort and joy? We forget the setting of the first Christmas. There were no sleigh bells in the snow and no chestnuts roasting by an open fire. Bethlehem did not look a Christmas catalogue from Pottery Barn.

photo by Jose Manuel Armengod / flickr

Christmas was set in a land where the citizens were scared as those refugees today who flee for their lives. Rome ruled their land and injustice was everywhere. Then word darkness isn a continual theme in every nativity story. It was a dark, dark world. And Christ came. He was born in a manger and not a palace. He was born to those of peasant stock and not those in the better part of town. There was no room in the inn, but we all know that story. His father was a carpenter and the mother was barely sixteen. Herod, the mad king was so jealous of someone who might be a contender to his throne that he had every boy baby killed that he could find. Jesus escaped by the skin of his teeth. So the world that Jesus came into was much like ours. A dark time. Confusion everywhere. There is little comfort and joy to be found in those stories.

We won’t find the real Christmas in the presents. And we won’t find the joy we seek in some mall. And we certainly won’t find what we desperately crave in the drop ins and cocktail parties. None of these open the door to Christmas.

Christmas will come upon us as it came to those in the old story. It was a gift. We cannot

photo courtesy of Jim Roberts Gallery / flickr

buy the season or program its wonder. We just open our eyes and stand back, breathlessly and wait.

Watch what? The little things. Remember Bethlehem and the manger. Ordinary shepherds on a cold hillside and parents so poor it was embarrassing. Remember the little things. 

Once sloshing through my own Christmas depression I talked to a counselor. He said, “We expect too much at Christmas. Something spectacular like the Macy’s parade.” He went on, “Build your Christmas around just one thing. Maybe even tiny. That’s what the gospel story was all about.”

So I tried his prescription. In fact I’ve tried it for several years. One year Christmas came when our neighbors across the street knocked on the door of the parsonage. The man could not work. The family had little money. And so anonymously we placed a Christmas box of apples and oranges and goodies and left them on their porch Christmas Eve night. Christmas morning they came across the street to share their treasures of apples and oranges with us. They gave us back what we had given them. And Christmas came.

photo by Tom Maloney / flickr

One year I was working in a large church. One of the men’s Sunday School classes decided to give every child on their needy list a hundred dollars. We had breakfast for the kids and then took them to the local Wal Mart to shop. The store had locked the doors so we were the only customers. Watching the kids run through the store was heartwarming. But one little girl case up to me and asked, “Could I take some of my money and buy my Daddy a coat?” I nodded yes. And Christmas came as the little girl ran toward the men’s section.

Sometimes Christmas is hard on Pastors. We are so busy that we hardly have time for our families until Christmas Eve is over.   But one Christmas Eve I sat in the church balcony waiting for our candlelight service to begin. And down the darkened aisle walked a little boy holding his candle singing softly, “This little light of mine…” And bone-tired, Christmas swept over me once more.

Maybe we all expect too much. Perhaps the media and advertisers have not helped us with

photo by Christina Saint Marche / flickr

this holy season. Maybe comfort and joy will come to us in one tiny event as it came to Mary,  Joseph and Wise Men and Shepherds.  No Hallelujah Chorus. Just some moment when we ponder the mystery and the light breaks through and the darkness can never extinguish its wonder. 

Life may not have worked out as you have wished. But God is here. “On that night of nights,” Dr. Scherer used to say, “God came down the stairs of heaven with a child in his arms.” And if we watch closely the Almighty may still appear in a song or nestled in a box of oranges. 

The old Advent message has not changed: “Watch. You never know when the Son of Man will come.” So we open our eyes. We look closely. And some moment when we least expect Christmas it may just slip through our side door and be front and center is our lives. Never what we expect. But always what we need. Comfort and joy! Comfort and joy!

photo by Nana B Agyer / flickr


--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com