Preparing for Christmas is a lot calmer these days. When Baxter was a kitten, it was a contest of wills, and I usually lost. The first Christmas Baxter and I shared, I was decorating the tree and suddenly discovered a pair of eyes staring back at me from the inside of the tree. Yes, it was Baxter. Tree decorations, nativity figures, garland, even Christmas pillows he considered his personal toys to chew, bat about, hide and sleep with. Christmas was a season of taking, not giving, for Baxter. He took whatever he wanted from the tree, shelves, wreaths, etc., and he used it for his pleasure and whim. They were all toys to entertain him and discard when something better came along.
Baxter is calmer about Christmas now. He may take a casual swipe at a tree ornament, but it ends there. He enjoys lying in front of the lit tree and staring at the twinkling lights. He seems to like the music. But, for the most part, he can’t be bothered with the rest of the paraphernalia of the season. Baxter has grown up.
Our faith calls us to grow up at Christmas. We can easily miss this invitation, because so many fancy, cute and romantic creations distract us during this season. The popular message is, “Make Christmas beautiful, tasty, sparkling, and spend what you must to get it that way.” Christmas gets reduced to toys not just for our children, but for us. We play with the “decorations” for the season to brighten our lives and satisfy our pleasures. The presents, the parties, the goodies and the packaging occupy our time and interest, and their meaning gets lost in the preparations. This meaning is the full story of Christ’s life.
Too often we limit the message of Christmas to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But that’s just the beginning. The full message is what Jesus said and did throughout the course of His life to His death and resurrection. He brought hope to the hopeless. He spoke of God’s love in ways that broke down the barriers preventing that love from touching various human conditions. He reversed the order of privileges in the world, lifting up the lowly and sending the rich away empty. He touched the untouchable; healed the incurable; ate with the riff-raff; forgave the condemned; was generous to the undeserving. Finally, He died unfairly, apart from most of His followers, an apparent failure. All of this pointed to what was to follow: the transformation of the human condition by the power of God raising Jesus to new life after physical death. This is the complete Christmas scene that the stable only hints at. An adult Christmas looks for more than the trappings of this season. It looks for the whole story of how God saved us from sin and death. It is not always a sweet and delightful tale, but it is a profoundly meaningful one, one that can sustain us long after the decorations are put away.
Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, made even more wonderful by those who understand the full meaning of this season. We celebrate the birth of a divine love so deep that it embraced the whole gamut of human life, even dying to give new life to all. When we grow up to Christmas, we stop making toys for ourselves from the decorations of the season and start living seriously in the wonder of God’s love.
After a while, Baxter learned to celebrate Christmas differently; maybe we can as well.
