Tuesday, December 3

 

 

Growing up, I always felt Christmas to be a time of beginnings. Even more than my own birthday or New Year’s Day, Christmas seemed to mark new time and a fresh start.

 

I grew up in Alaska, where more often than not fresh snow muffled the sounds of busy life on Christmas morning, and time would reorient to the rhythms of steadily glowing lights, slowly rising cinnamon rolls and just one more mug of hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows on top.

 

Looking back, I wonder if I wasn’t somehow sensing the newness of time measured by the Church’s calendar — the anticipation of Advent and the collectively held breath of humanity, culminating in the little town of Bethlehem, a new baby tucked away in a manger, with angels and shepherds looking on in wonder on this holiest of silent nights.

Then I had children of my own. And I realized that the slow, peaceful, contemplative wonder of Christmas morning was only part of the story.

 

It has taken me awhile to come to grips with redefining the “wonder of Christmas.” The bulbs on the Christmas tree never work the way I remember from childhood. The cinnamon buns fail to rise (because I forgot the yeast!) and the coffee grows cold while one more dirty diaper is changed and the spilled apple juice is mopped up.

 

On other Christmases, between childhood and children, the “wonder of Christmas” felt much more brittle — in the absence of children, in the grief of losing what once seemed so stable and permanent, in the presence of a world gone mad.

 

The wonder of Christmas is a mysterious thing. When the bulbs burn out, the rolls don’t rise and the coffee grows cold … the wonder is still there, even if it’s flickering. May God bless you today with unexpected life in the midst of death, and small lights pushing back darkness.

 

Dr. Kathy Maxwell
Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies