Christmas Day
I bet you have something about the Christmas season that makes you feel nostalgic. Fond memories of baking oatmeal raisin cookies with your grandmother, or decorating the tree with Home Alone 2 on in the background. My wife and I have watched our share of Hallmark Christmas movies this month, even though one of us is not exactly as nostalgic for them as the other. One curled up on the couch and ready to press play; the other half-trying to find an excuse to deep clean the refrigerator. One with hot cocoa in hand; the other ready with some snarky remarks about the generic plot that’s about to unfold. I’m just glad she’ll still watch them with me — I love them!
It’s great to be nostalgic about Santa, the elf on your shelf, and fencing with wrapping paper tubes, but what about the birth of Jesus? Do you have any fond memories of the spiritual side of the season? Maybe even graced memories?
I know for myself, the spiritual aspects of Christmas were mostly lost on me until I went to college. We did go Mass as a family on Christmas Eve growing up, and sure I liked carols like Silent Night and Away in a Manger. And we did have a few Nativity scenes around the house (usually mixed with action figures adoring the baby Jesus). But Christmas Day would come and go, and apart from enjoying the lights that were still up, I would pretty quickly transition back to normal life, or come up with some New Year’s resolution I wasn’t going to keep.
Once I gave my faith another shot in college, however, my focus on Christmas really changed – and I have very nostalgic memories of that time as well. For one thing, I discovered that the REAL Christmas season in the Church is actually for about two weeks FOLLOWING Christmas. Christmas Day isn’t supposed to be the last hoorah of the Christmas season, but rather Advent leading up to it is supposed to be a time of waiting, longing, and preparing for Jesus to come, and then Christmas Day is supposed to kick off a big celebration. But with stores putting out Valentines’ Day decorations on December 26th, how are we supposed to keep the Christmas celebration going? Here’s the secret:
Do the opposite of Lent. Okay not really, but just like you might give things up for Lent to set the time apart for God, you can do intentional things during the Christmas season to similarly set that time apart – but with feasting instead of fasting! Have an extra handful of M&Ms to celebrate God becoming one of us. Listen to some spiritual Christmas carols throughout the week, like “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” that has amazing lyrics like “Veiled in flesh, the God-head see.” and then reflect on those words. Take some time every evening and quietly read the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels (maybe next to the Christmas tree!).
We need to put in the effort; we can’t just passively sit around and let our only spiritual insights for the season come from the Grinch (though it’s a start). In the Gospel for Christmas Mass at Dawn, ‘the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”’ They had to get moving and seek out what, or rather whom they were looking for. Like most things in life, we’ll get out of it what we put into it. Then hopefully one day you’ll have some nostalgic memories of this year’s Christmas season, when like Mary you “kept all these things, reflecting on them in [your] heart.”