Christmas Spirit

gift-giving

This year Christmas has been different for me.  For several of my friends who have lost loved ones this year, this Christmas will be different in a more profound way.  For me, it's just the death of Santa.  My boys no longer pretend to believe in Santa, and I have only bought two toys for each of them under $20 each.  No Legos, no showstopping gifts, just twelve days of gift-giving things we "need" like a new belt or better fitting bike helmet, a jacket for school or an alarm clock.  It has been fun to get small thoughtful gifts that they have mentioned they need--or knowing what they like to do--would enjoy having: a tape measure, a better pencil sharpener, a wireless shower speaker.  It has given us time to appreciate each gift and has helped keep the focus on Jesus, the greatest gift.

song-singing

Another new tradition I have enjoyed this year is our couch time devotional Hallelujah: A Journey

Through Advent with Handel's Messiah. We have a weekly hymn, poem, and memory passage and daily we get to hear the richness of Handel's oratorio paired with the reading of  Bible passages, not usually associated with Christmas. "Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow," (Lamentations 1:2) (Click to hear the beautiful Tenor Arioso.) We finished Part 2 yesterday with the Hallelujah chorus, singing at the top of our lungs.  It was great fun to celebrate the end of a section which had been focused on the Crucifixion.

One of my gifts this year to me was the complete vocal score of The Messiah.  How it has blessed my heart to hear Knox picking out the tenor of "All we like sheep" (Click to hear Chorus) on the piano as he sang. The gravity of the gift of Jesus is one which has struck me powerfully this season.  Not only did Jesus, the Word made flesh, become a baby, he lived and died so that we might live, and now He reigns, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Forever and ever! This gift is not something to be dismissed or treated casually.

upward-focusing

I heard a song the other day, Beautiful Day by Jamie Grace.  This song is catchy, just a feel-good harmless tune.  But the attitude it uncovered in one of the lines bothers me a bit: This feeling can't be wrong,/ I'm about to get my worship on /Take me away, I think the part of "getting my worship on" as a way to escape bothers me most.  In worshiping God, we do escape ourselves.  But that is not why we "get our worship on." We worship God because He deserves it.  We worship God because we can do nothing else when confronted with his majesty.  We worship God because we are overwhelmed with gratitude by what He has done for us.

Christ-living

We recently went caroling at the local nursing homes.  As we were singing and spreading cheer with Christmas cards for the residents, I was saddened.  Partly because this is where my eldest will be once I am gone.  It seems a lonely place.  I saw him in some of the residents' faces who wheeled to the hallway door for a better view of the singing, craving the interaction, just as he will one day--just as he does now when he gets home from school or his brothers finish their afternoon schoolwork. 

I was also saddened, worried about my younger boys, whether they were having fun.  Did this make them sad as it did me? I asked one of the them when we got home whether he had had fun caroling.  He nodded briskly, his eyes seemingly confused by my question. He had shaken hands, smiled at, and entertained several lonely people that afternoon. His elder brother asks him to sing and play for him daily.  He was really just extending what he does at home for his older brother to even older strangers, many of whom are like his brother. That evening, we were silly together with lots of laughter.  It had been a good day after all.

I think something about me was revealed that day: my attitude about caroling was like what I had found troubling in the song by Jamie Grace.  I was focused on whether my children were having fun when I should have realized that what was happening right now was so much more important: my boys were learning how to love as Jesus does.  Love the lonely; show kindness to strangers; give to others, expecting nothing in return.  Sing for the sake of someone else's joy.  Offer the sacrifice of praise that Hebrews 13:15 talks about:

Our constant sacrifice to God should be the praise of lips that give thanks to his name. Yet we should not forget to do good and to share our good things with others, for these too are the sort of sacrifices God will accept (Phillips).

Or we can say as we read in couch time yesterday when Charles Dickens' Scrooge meets the Spirit of Christmas Future in A Christmas Carol: "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." And to borrow Dickens again:  "May that be truly said of us, and all of us!"