In the Narnia stories of C.S. Lewis, the White Witch has cast a spell over the land that makes it "always winter, but never Christmas". Just those words paint a bleak and depressing picture in my mind. A lot of life here on earth can feel just like that cold, dark winter season and maybe it's no more than normal or maybe I'm just more sensitive to the suffering around me, but this year has seemed to feel more "wintery" than years passed.
I know the tendency when missing someone dear is to want to just skip over holidays and forget they exist, and if ever I feel the absence of mom most it's during special times of celebration, but my heart has gone the other direction and I'm more grateful than ever before for the joy of the Advent season. To think that so much of the world stops to celebrate the event of a baby King who came to earth to rescue the world from it's cold darkness all those thousands of years ago is pretty breath taking. Sure, Jesus likely wasn't actually born on December 25. And true, so much of the world brushes right over the reality of the holiday and treats it like a fun little game of "being good" so as to earn the favor of a fat man bearing gifts. But just because we mess it all up in our humanness doesn't mean it's not still glorious. And it is. To get to set aside a whole month to consider and remember and wonder and be glad and take a deep breath at the thought of Hope entering the world at all is a gift. It's the reminder of the truth that there is beauty in winter.
Christmas. Advent. The reminder that we do not live in a world where it is always winter and never Christmas, but that Christ came down and is making everything right again. The reminder that this isn't the whole story and that the story is big and wonderful and glorious. More glorious than we can imagine. And so we celebrate. We soak it in and feed the habit of remembering so that it carries us through the year until the next time the world stops to remember. We make memories and we bring our kids into the wonder of it all and when we feel like we're messing it up or not doing enough we remember that that's exactly why we need Christmas in the first place.
I know the tendency when missing someone dear is to want to just skip over holidays and forget they exist, and if ever I feel the absence of mom most it's during special times of celebration, but my heart has gone the other direction and I'm more grateful than ever before for the joy of the Advent season. To think that so much of the world stops to celebrate the event of a baby King who came to earth to rescue the world from it's cold darkness all those thousands of years ago is pretty breath taking. Sure, Jesus likely wasn't actually born on December 25. And true, so much of the world brushes right over the reality of the holiday and treats it like a fun little game of "being good" so as to earn the favor of a fat man bearing gifts. But just because we mess it all up in our humanness doesn't mean it's not still glorious. And it is. To get to set aside a whole month to consider and remember and wonder and be glad and take a deep breath at the thought of Hope entering the world at all is a gift. It's the reminder of the truth that there is beauty in winter.
Christmas. Advent. The reminder that we do not live in a world where it is always winter and never Christmas, but that Christ came down and is making everything right again. The reminder that this isn't the whole story and that the story is big and wonderful and glorious. More glorious than we can imagine. And so we celebrate. We soak it in and feed the habit of remembering so that it carries us through the year until the next time the world stops to remember. We make memories and we bring our kids into the wonder of it all and when we feel like we're messing it up or not doing enough we remember that that's exactly why we need Christmas in the first place.