It was a rainy day about a week before Christmas in Atlanta, when the world was swathed in soggy shades of gray. I was in the middle of my Christmas funk. It's not that I don't like the season, but after a while, the season doesn't seem to like me. I was in a round of church parties and school events. It had been a week since I had a single night off.
I had always hoped for a Norman Rockwell Christmas, with snow, carolers, festive people and glowing smiles. But no Christmas in my entire life has fully lived up to my expectations. I have never seen a snowy Christmas. Instead, they are always cold and soggy like this one or dry and sunny, witih a dry, brown winter landscape. That momnt of quiet we all seeom to yearn for at the end of the year, escapes us. Replaced instead by social pressures and frantic shopping. It's business in high gear at the end of the year, which makes us think that the whole world is one giant treadmill. Sometimes, I feel I am like the guy at the gym who turns up the treadmill too high, and has to run as hard as he can to keep brom being slung off. One day, the Christmas machine, and the whole society t supports will come crashing down on our ears. We cannot keep this up foreve.
this particular day, I was trying to finish my last bit of shopping with my last bit of money. I awas at K-Mart walking the aisles of the Christmas section.
Have you ever heard the word kitsch? It refers to the kind of cheap junk which is neither valueaboe, useful, or even tasteful. Chrstmas is kitchy season, to be sure. The aisle of K Mart Christmas department are covered with it. It thought about all those people whose livelihood depends upon selling junk we neither need nor want.
One particular kitschy ornament caught my eye. It was a plastic Christmas bell, made in Hong Kong. There was a plastic ball attached to a white string. It was mostly white with red and green paint badly painted on the top part. I pulled the string on it, and it began to pay "Silent Night" as badly as I had ever heard it play.
The tone was off, the timing was off, and it was barely recognizable. But you could hear the tune, nevertheless. They words came back to me.
Silent Night Holy Night All is celm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother nd child. Holy Infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Tears welled up in my eyes. I don't know why. I had heard th song so many times before in this frantic season, but somehow I had not heard it.
You wonder where Christmas is, in the middle of the hectic holidays/ Its right there, in the core of our souls. In It's never left, but hides underneath all the glitter and junk of the season. Secular holiday songs ad parties can never fully wipe it out. Commericalism cannot hide it forever. It's there, buried under the pile like a seed ready to spout.
Heavenly peace. It's there. You may not see it or feel it but it's there, deep down underneath it all. God's love in human form. All it takes is a little imagination and a change of attitude to see it. If we look at the outer Christmas, it's a wasteful, commercial mess. But if we look behind it, we see the love of the Father, the sacrifice of he Son, and the touch of the Holy Spirit.
Christmas is what we make it. It's We shoose the Christmas we will have, just as we choose the lives we live all year. We can focus on love or we can focus on obligation and anxiety. Love prevails under the weight of the world, in the silent night of love.
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