Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The Perfect Christmas

Just the word “Christmas” brings so many memories. My family has so much tradition when it comes to Christmas.  Many of those traditions have faded as we have grown older and bigger (not in weight but in number.)  Christmas is such a special time for me and my family.  As my children are getting bigger I feel frantic to get all the right traditions and decorations.  I want to carry on the tradition of having traditions.  I’m tempted to be sucked into the materialism and have a lot of Christmas “stuff.”  (not that there is anything wrong with the “stuff.”)  I want to get this, and do this, and get it just right.  I try to get everything else in my life just right, so it's it's no surprise that I'm aiming for perfection in my Christmas celebration.

The truth is that I don’t have to get Christmas right because it is already perfect in and of itself.  It is Christ’s birthday and how we celebrate is just that, it’s how we are celebrating it.  Jesus came and he was born and it was perfect.  For the western mind, it probably isn’t what we would call perfect.  A cave is no place for the Messiah, we think, but that is just as God planned.  Humility is how God wanted Jesus to enter the world and that is the perfect way.  I don’t have all the answers of how we escape the materialism and anxiousness of the season, but I have the starting point.  We stop trying to aim for perfection and we celebrate Jesus’ birth, whether that is through lights, Christmas trees, singing, baking, eating or presents.  We stop to remember the true reason for the season and remember Christmas is already perfect, and you can’t make perfect better.

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