In an effort to spare my mouse arm, I'm posting something I first posted two years ago:
As Christmas approaches, the whole world (or, at least my whole tiny world in our tiny town) gets caught up in the preparations. People chatter about decorating trees, baking cookies, giving gifts. I hear "Merry Christmas" everywhere and radio stations that normally shy away from Jesus and His pesky ways play songs about the Savior. On TV, Linus Van Pelt announces to the whole world what Christmas is all about.
It's as if, for awhile, the world shares one faith.
It stirs me to imagine what it would be like to live in a world that truly lived and acted as the Body of Christ, a world that shared one vision and had one goal: to see that Savior that Linus tells us about.
Then, of course, it all comes to an abrupt halt on December 26th (this is the part I don't love ....) While my family and I are celebrating via the liturgical calendar, which tells us that Christmas begins on December 25th, is celebrated for an octave and that the Christmas season marches officially on until the Feast of the Presentation (Feb. 2), while we're belting out Christmas carols, celebrating the birth of Jesus in high style, the rest of the world is saying it's over. We're still saying "Merry Christmas" when others have switched to "Happy New Year." We count the Twelve Days of Christmas and look forward to the Feast of the Epiphany in a world that thinks the Twelve Days of Christmas must mean the final countdown of shopping days before the 25th.
But, we don't let any of that put a damper on our celebrations. Jesus and His birthday are worth days and days of celebration, and He's worth looking like an out-of-sync moron in the eyes of the world. And fortunately, we're raising kids who don't mind being out-of-sync morons (at least not so far) so they happily celebrate right along with us.
And we're all thankful that, at least for a little while, the world cared about what Linus Van Pelt had to say.
2 comments:
Karen,
I so agree.
What really drives me batty is that our town will only pick up Christmas trees on the Monday after Christmas. Which means if you want to leave yours up for the full 12 days until Epiphany (and usually in our case for a while thereafter) you have to devise your own means of disposing of said tree.
What a lovely post and how very true.
Jane
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