Christmas Chaos

December 19, 2008

I ran errands a month ago in shorts and a teeshirt. Two weeks ago I watched leaves in vibrant yellow, orange and red fall like rain outside our bedroom window. Today I’m sitting in Starbucks under a speaker that’s gushing forth Christmas songs from Sarah McLachlan to Nat King Cole with rain and cold on the other side of the storefront glass. Christmas took forever to get arrive and now the seasons come and go so quickly it makes my neck snap.

So here I am, enjoying cheerfully intoxicating holiday music though I suspect by next week the same songs heard over and over and over and over again will be peeling the fiber off my last nerve and causing my ears to bleed. I’ll keep you updated as things progress.

And so, with Christmas still a week away I’m in need of a long nap or a coffea arabica infusion, not that it hasn’t all been wonderful. There have been the children’s advent stories to memorize, the church family gingerbread house decorating hallapalooza of 2008, a neighborhood Christmas fete for 30 in our home, and a family holiday “little bite” dinner involving 12 untested recipes and a partridge in a pear tree. The crab cakes with lemon aioli were magnificient. The partridge in the pear tree, not so much.

Still ahead awaits yet a few more family brewhaha’s, and the Christmas Eve pageant dress rehearsal and performance where I have been assigned the role of a lead angel. Typecasting is such a burden! Throw in the gift buying – hiding – wrapping, the inside/outside house decorating, the Christmas light detanglement debacle, the removal of ingested tinsel from the litter box gala, and holiday errands galore and another Christmas season whizzes by and leaves me (and you) in desperate need of a holiday from the holidays.

I can’t believe I’m the only one on January 2 of every year who declares with firm resolve to anyone within the sound of my voice (and since I’m usually screaming at the time that’s a lot of anyones) that next year will be different. I will slow down. I will have quiet times of prayer and reflection. I will be silent and still. I will center myself on the “reason for the season” no matter how much the idiom irritates me.

I will I will I will I will I WILL!

And….I didn’t. Again! You say ‘yes’ to one little thing and before you know the horses are at the gate and the holiday trifecta (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years) is off and running toward the finishing line stretched across January 2.

I feel regret and a touch of guilt every year. I wanted so much to do it differently and I wonder what I’m doing wrong that I can’t find a few minutes in every day of Advent to slow down, light a candle, read a devotional, meditate on a Scripture, take a little lectio divina break, or walk a labyrinth in silence with thoughts turned toward the Christ child.

Emmanuel, God with us. Just good luck keeping up at Christmas!

This annual insanity is the reason I love Jon’s cartoon. “Silent Night, Holy Night” my gingerbread baking behind!

Angels singing. Sheep bleating. Shepherds and Magi coming and going. Animals munching and pooping and wandering. A mother and father oohing and ahhing. A baby sucking, burping, urping, sighing, cooing, and crying. Whatever sentimental images we hold onto of the nativity versus however it actually “came down,” on that night long ago when the Son of God entered into the world I’d bet my pine-needle covered rug there were interruptions (Hey guys, can you and your sheep wait outside for a minute! We have a baby coming here!), distractions (Joseph, get the goat away from me!) and a whole lot of noise (Waaaah. Baaaaa. Mooooo. Slurp. Munch. Plop!)

It might not have been a Silent Night but it was most assuredly a Holy Night in the most human, earthy of ways. Whatever the holiday mayhem or Christmas chaos that comprises your days, don’t let the wonder and glory of it all pass you by.

God made flesh among us.

A child is born.

Savior. Redeemer. Healer. King.

The world and our lives forever changed by God’s gift of grace.

Thank you. Amen.

Spread the Word!