It’s Christmas time again. And after the year we’ve had, I feel like we need a holy and silent night.
Parker Broaddus
Author of A Hero’s Curse & Nightrage Rising
Christmassy Time
So what about the Christmas holidays capture us in a way the rest of the year misses? We laugh and joke about it, but for me a part of it is the repetitive, kitschy music. Aunty Maude’s fruitcake. (Blech). The cold. Christmas shopping. *groan* B-level holiday movies. (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”)
Of course it’s also “family,” and “Jesus,” but what in the world have we been doing if we push those two into a storage box in the attic only to brush them off one day a year. Talk about absentee parenting and cold religion. Hopefully family and faith are daily encounters, not once-a-year reminders.
And yet, even if faith is a daily encounter, Christmas re-centers me. It brings me back to the beginning.
The season starts with Advent. Advent is a season of waiting. (It feels like much of this year has been waiting – waiting for things to get back to normal, waiting for an end to a pandemic, waiting for election results, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for school to open back up…)
But Advent reminds me what I’m waiting for. Because ultimately, I’m not waiting for the things mentioned above. Ultimately, I’m waiting for Christ’s Incarnation. I’m waiting for the renewing of all things. Light that comes into darkness, and the feasting and celebration that comes with that event.
It can be hard to wait. But perhaps in the waiting, we learn something about God’s presence we couldn’t have known otherwise. Perhaps we find that in the waiting, we are invited to experience more of God’s presence. One of my favorite college professors, Dr. Veith, wrote on the subject today, and quoted Daniella Royer:
Advent means “coming.” The two comings of Jesus that the Church anchors herself in during this season are Christ’s Incarnation and his second coming. When we beseech Emmanuel to come, we are not just reliving the ancient Israelites’ longing for the awaited Messiah. We are also awaiting his victorious return and renewing of the universe. But to be completely honest, waiting for Christ in a year where we are currently waiting out death, disease, despair, and so much darkness seems impossible and pointless. Why can’t we just move on to the feasting and festivities? I desperately need the joy of Christmas, the blessed assurance that God has become man. I need to marvel in the innocence of a baby, the tender purity of salvation. But as I’ve frustratedly questioned why church history and my faith tradition force me to wait, I’ve realized that perhaps waiting is an invitation to more of God’s presence.
I hope this season you find your way into more of God’s presence. I hope His presence is a light and a comfort in the darkness, and I hope it colors the whole of next few weeks–the glittering tree, the laden table, the gaily wrapped gifts–with its radiant light.
Robin Lythgoe
Author of As the Crow Flies
It’s time for another (short!) article with my friendly neighborhood Quills. The subject? Christmas. Wonderful, right? Five minutes into it and I found myself in an unusually grumpy, Grinch-like mood. Half an hour later, still stewing, I thought about backing out. Reluctantly, I sat down to apply myself to a little “free-writing.” One of the wonderful things about free-writing is how it sparks ideas and memories…
Patricia Reding
Author of Oathtaker
by Patricia Reding
Copyright Patricia Reding 2020
Christmas always brings clearly to mind, how very different life is today than it was when I was a child. Certainly, we had what we needed. But as to extras—even the smallest of treats—they were few and very far between, indeed, and that was true at any time of year. (Perhaps this explains why I have a vivid memory of a time I was given a simple Tootsie Roll Pop sucker. The event stands out in my memory as something most extraordinary.)
I remember that each Christmas, the local theater put on a free movie for all the kids to see …