But then Christmas comes around, and it never seems to feel like Christmas. The anticipation I've built up all year doesn't seem to be met, and Christmas never seems as big and exciting and filled with joy and sweet smells and huge gifts and loudly sung carols. Each Christmas I find myself already wishing for the next one so I can do it better, because I feel as though I've somehow failed this one. And then the next year I feel as though I've failed to live out the Christmas spirit again.This year doesn't seem to have been much different. I approached the Christmas season with such glowing anticipation and a long list of ways to celebrate the season (watch Christmas movies, bake lots of cookies, read the Christmas Story over and over, go through the Advent readings, drive around to see Christmas lights, play games, make crafts, and so on and so forth). Suddenly it was the middle of December and it barely felt like Christmas, and then the next thing I knew it was only a few days until Christmas and I still don't know where the time went.
Prior to Christmas I remember really wanting this Christmas to be different. It's so easy to get wrapped up (literally) in the gift-giving, the baking and singing and decorating, card-making and every-other-day runs to the store to pick up another present for someone you forgot to add to the list.
In all honesty, I don't seem to focus on Christ so much at Christmas time. I think about His gift of love, His sacrifice, Him coming to earth and being born as a baby in a humble stable far more throughout the year than I do during the Christmas season.
I so desperately want Christmas to be all about Christ, to be celebrating Him even more during this season, constantly remembering His most beautiful gift of Himself to us, and it just doesn't seem to happen. This year I thought so much and so greatly intended for my Christmas to be far more Christ-centered than it is in the past, yet I find it so much harder to focus intently on Christ with so much else going on and an ever-lengthening To-Do list.
I feel as though Christmas should be a really special time of celebrating Christ's birth, feel like I should be thinking about His gift constantly. As I have spent the month thinking about what it means to truly be in the "Christmas spirit," to truly anticipate the celebration of His first coming and live with that hope, I've started thinking about how really we should be living with the "Christmas spirit" all the time.
What does Christmas really mean? What is this Christmas spirit?
Every year on Christmas Eve we watch my mom's favorite Christmas movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol. Having seen the movie so many times, I often tune it out a bit, not paying as much attention since I can practically quote the whole thing (not really, so don't ask me to).
And this year as I watched it, a few lines stuck out to me, reverberating with the thoughts I'd been mulling over about how to live out a life of rejoicing over Christ's birth and living in the hope of His coming all the year.
Towards the end of the movie a now joyful and filled with life Scrooge walks singing through the streets. Some of his words are, "I will remember Christmas and live it all the year." That line stuck out to me, and I began to listen more closely to the other words from his song. He sings about how it feels like Christmas, and the things that make it feel like Christmas, sharing and giving, hot cups of tea with friends and sharing mittens made by your mother.
But what I loved the most was when he said that it's in the places you find love that it feels like Christmas, and when he sings that now each day he will start with a grateful prayer, love, and a thankful heart.
Because Christmas is about just that, love and thankfulness and deep, fulfilling joy. It is about peace, and hope, and beautiful promises.
And these things, this peace and love, joy and hope, promise and fulfillment, these are things we can and should hold on to all year long. They are not merely catch-phrases we can throw about amongst our green and red sparkling ornaments and multi-colored lights strung up on the tree. They aren't just warm fuzzy things to fill us up for a short time like homemade gingerbread cookies and hot cocoa by the fire. They aren't wrapping paper to look pretty for awhile under the tree during the Christmas season and then ripped open on the morning of December 25 to be forgotten until next year when we recycle them.
No, these promises, this hope and joy and love and peace are the gift, to be opened every day when we awake, lived out each moment as we live, and fallen asleep with as the most comforting blanket and bedtime story. They are beautiful and more than just Christmas, because Christmas isn't just about December and red and green and Santa and nativity scenes.
Christmas is about a baby boy who is also God who was born in a stable because He loved you and me so much that even though there was no room in the inn He still came. Even though we so often don't want Him, He came. Even though we reject Him, even though we think we can do everything ourselves, even though we fail Him and get more excited Christmas presents than His birthday celebration, He came. Even though He knew we would kill Him, He came.
He came. And that is what Christmas is about, and the promises that His birth fulfilled and the hope that it gave us, the joy that it brings, the love that it demonstrates, the peace that will come to this earth. And so Christmas is remembered on December 25, but Christmas should be lived "all the year."
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