Christmas Catharsis

Bah Humbug! It’s the season to fight off my Scroogeness. I’m ‘fessing up. Do I see any other hands?
 
In the days before Christmas I constantly battle the bah-humbugs! Every year I feel pressured by expectations that are not Christmas. I revolt against traditions for the sake of tradition. Is Christmas supposed to stress me out? How real am I really if I have to forcibly maintain the merry and cheery when I am feeling weary and leery?
 
The clincher is no one wants to be accused of being Scrooge
I battle the sorry stereotype that anyone who lodges a complaint, whimpers a worry, just doesn’t feel up to it, not now, not this year, not that, has been seriously scrooged.
 
I fear that if I don’t show appropriate fa-la-la-la-la someone will say, “What happened to your Christmas Spirit?” I’ll be scorned and branded. Brainwashed by songs like It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Jingle Bell Rock, and It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas, I feel knuckled every time I’m not having a holly, jolly holiday rocking through a winter wonderland.
 
Am I a frugal, stingy, no-joy, kill Santa who ought to be tied to an armchair to watch The Muppets’ Christmas Carol? (Not a bad idea–love that move.) I’m not against gifts, Christmas trees, lights, wreaths, parties, or even fruitcakes. I like waking up Christmas morning with half-dressed family members to unwrap presents around the tree. I just don’t like feeling forced to do Christmas as dictated by someone else.
 
Sometimes I get the feeling that someone stole Christmas and it’s not the Grinch.
Or maybe, I let it slip through my fingers. Perhaps I let it go. In the spirit of “love and joy come to you and to you a wassail too,” I have complied with the laws of tolerance, political correctness, and what’s true for me doesn’t have to be true for you. Let’s not offend anyone. I call it Christmas, you call it Hanukah, they call it Kwanzaa. Hey, peace on earth, let’s all call it “the holiday season.”
 
Can we just call the whole thing off? Bah humbug, Mr. Scrooge!
Or let’s just make sure that everyone has their choice of prophets and get on with it:
 
Door Number 1: Allah
Door Number 2: Buddha
Door Number 3: Joseph Smith
Door Number 4: L. Ron Hubbard
Door Number 5: Whomever Oprah’s following this week
Door Number 6: Satan
Door Number 7: Jesus
Door Number 8: Nobody because Nobody’s there

But that’s not Christmas
We should practice religious tolerance—literally tolerate others’ different religious beliefs. You can’t make people believe anything anyway: we all have to choose. But Christmas. Christmas is different.

Jesus IS the reason for the season, and Christ is in Christmas, and maybe the discomfort I feel, the frustration and my Scroogness is my fault. I have succumbed. I have surrendered. I have laid down my holy reverence for what Christmas really is and have let the holiday train steamroll me back and forth jingling it’s ho-ho-ho bells until I am as poor and crippled as Tiny Tim.
 
Christmas revolution
I’m not calling for a revolution of anywhere except my heart and my actions. I have to take back Christmas – not for others, not for the world, not for Jesus. But for myself.
 
Why? Because I do know the reason for the season. I know the story in history. And I know my story about why I honor the baby born in tiny Bethlehem to a virgin girl engaged to a clueless but faithful man. I know that hardly anyone knew the first Christmas was worth celebrating —some uneducated shepherds, some astrologists from out of town, some angels who descended from on high. No one hung wreaths, or made eggnog, or decorated cookies, or created any holiday sales.
 
And I know that I celebrate Christmas because Jesus Christ’s coming signified the end of the end and the beginning of the beginning. Jesus changed everything forever. He did what only the Son of God could do—collapse the unfathomable Creator of the limitless Universe, all his power, all his being, all his extraordinariness into a man who came to live among us with the sole purpose of telling us how much he loves us.
 
I have to do Christmas in ways that don’t pay someone to keep the holiday spirit but replay the original story of Jesus coming into the world—and how that has made all the difference in my world.
 
I need to change my playlist from Merry Christmas to Mary Had a Baby. From It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas to It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. And I have to let Christmas carols ring in my ears:

Hark the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"
 
Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"
 
Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

I have to not think about Scrooge.
Scrooge was a fictional character. I am haunted by the Scrooges of Christmas past, present, and future, and I need to close the book on him, pull the plug, let him take a backseat to the main character in the one and only Christmas story – Jesus's birth.
 
 And I have talk about Jesus
It’s my choice to talk to people about Christmas and not about “the holiday season.” It’s okay to see retail stores’ decorations for what they are—bait for bringing in the bucks. It’s my prerogative to seek to enjoy Christmas for what it is, and not for what it isn’t. It should be my joy to rightfully make Christmas the opportunity to share about my Savior—and not apologize for it.
 
So, bah-humbug, Mr. Scrooge. You’ve been scrubbed.

Posted via email from 40 Day Fast