To Celebrate or Not to Celebrate the "US" of Christmas…?

I just saw that I've had 1,131 views of my blog!  Seriously??  haha!  Well, that's good.  I was thinking maybe there had been 20, 18 of which are me coming to see if there are any comments.  I know - I don't need to do that because I also get an email when someone comments, but you know… just checking.  The truth is though, I'm not so concerned with whether people actually read this or not.  It's just kinda therapeutic to write sometimes, because I'm a verbal processor - ha!!  I'm sure other bloggers will agree.  So, if you're one of the 1,131 views on here, thanks!  I had no idea you were out there.  :)


It's Christmas time, and as you saw by the last blog entry I posted, my shared blog post from Jamie TVWM, you'll know that I too have had a hard time getting myself into the Christmas spirit this year.  I shouldn't be having SO much trouble, since it's been so rainy and cold-ish here lately.  Summer is definitely NOT here - YET.  I believe with all the faith in me that it's coming though!  And then, as normal, after about a month of awesome weather I'll be begging for some rain and cold again. Such is life.  My tree looks great though, and smells GREAT every day, so that helps.  That - and the few little things I have put out that I have traveled with now for years.  You can't haul around much when you've been as transient as I have been the last 14 years… but there are a couple of significant things that make their way to wherever I am at Christmas.  That - and the entire month of December nothing else gets played in my car but Christmas music.  It's a rule.


As I sat last night with just the Christmas tree lights on thinking about things… I couldn't seem to get away from the fact that I have so much when others have so little.  I am truly incredibly blessed to live where I live, do what I do, and to have the ability to fight for those who are trapped in modern-day slavery.  I still REALLY struggle with Christmas and our ridiculous obsession with STUFF.  Last year I opted out, and encouraged all my friends to do the same.  I asked them to buy something for a needy child instead of for me… and we all did just that instead of giving to each other, who already have MORE than we could possibly ever NEED.  It was fun!  So this year… I was kind of waiting to see if they wanted to do that again - but no one mentioned it.  I had to wonder whether it really made an impact on them at all…?  I want to believe it did, even though it seems everyone is "back to normal" this year.  I'm not "back to normal" though… doubt I ever will be again.  You just can't go back after having seen what I've seen around the world… and working in the area of human trafficking… it's impossible to ever be "normal" again.  And I'm really good with that!  I honestly wouldn't go back for anything.  


But I do have a dilema… what to do with Christmas.  I guess I'm still struggling with buying presents for my friends and family who really don't NEED anything.  It's not that I don't love them and want to express that… but is that what Christmas should be about??  US???  I don't think so… yet it's hard, because talk about being saturated, brainwashed, trained, conditioned, whatever you want to call it -- that we HAVE to get each other presents for Christmas.  UGH.  I did buy some stuff this year… but not much.  I just couldn't.  And it's not about love… it's not even about money so much… it's about that niggling part of my heart that just simply won't let me go there.  Is that okay??  I don't know.  All I know is I can't get away from it.  


What do you think about Christmas?  DO you think about Christmas??  What do you think Jesus thinks about Christmas…??  I wonder if he's sad at how we've twisted it into being about us.  Yeah, we might read the Christmas story, or have a nativity set up somewhere… but if we're honest… I'm pretty sure most of us spend more time worrying we won't get all our shopping done on time - rather than worrying we won't spend enough time honoring Jesus on his birthday.  I spent a LOT of years guilty as charged on that one.  


I want to continue to be ruined for the "normal" stuff of life… the "normal" way we celebrate Christmas.  I want it to be different.  I want it to be about people who don't have a clue what the love of God looks like.  My friends and family KNOW I love them.  If they doubt that because they don't get enough Christmas presents from me… then there's a lot more wrong with our relationship than a lack of presents.  The great part is - they're not like that, so it's not a worry for me… but for some it is!  How can we show people this Christmas how much God loves them… that he sent his son to be born in a manger… to live a sinless life so he could give his life for us and pay for the sins of mankind once and for all… that the gift of LIFE is what he offers… life after this one is over… when REAL life begins??!! 


Next Christmas I will once again be blowing my "don't spend money on me" horn, and encouraging my people to do the same.  When I think about doing that… I breathe a sigh of relief.  It's right.  It's good.  And I'm pretty sure it's what Jesus would be doing if he were here in the flesh on his birthday.  Anybody wanna join that party??  :)  

Re-Posting from "Jamie The Very Worst Missionary"

One of the blogs I follow is "Jamie The Very Worst Missionary".  She and her family live in Costa Rica.  She continually cracks me up, speaks the truth most of us don't dare say out loud (sometimes with colorful expletives, but always REAL) and this one in particular I thought was great!  I can so relate to struggling with Christmas in a HOT climate, having grown up in Hawaii and now living in NZ where Christmas happens in the summer and the only sleigh bells I hear are in the Christmas music that is continually pumping in my car from Dec 1st to the 26th.  It's the ONLY thing that makes me feel at all "Christmasy" around here.  Even the decorations in town and in the shops look… weird.  Anyway, enough from me!  Enjoy Jamie!!  :)

Mele Kalikimaka and all that crap.

As I write this, at 8 am, the sun is slipping across my desk through the slats in my bamboo shades. Barefoot and barely dressed, I'm sipping lukewarm coffee and wishing for a breeze to come and stir the air a bit. It's muggy.

My kids are off at noon every day this week, anxiously counting down until Friday, when summervacation begins. Of course, the end of this count-down signals the beginning of the next; “How many days 'til Christmas, Mom?” And I have to remind myself that, Oh yeah, it's Christmastime – which explains the six foot juniper, all bedazzled in the living room.

I don't wanna sound like a total b...erm, I mean...a total grinch, but I'm having a tough time getting in the mood for Holiday festivities. Christmas in the tropics is just too weird. The other day it was super sunny and windy, and I ran into a Costa Rican friend, who said, with a grin, “Doesn't it feel just like Christmas?!”

Squinting into the hot sun, I bitterly quipped, “Oh, yeah, just like Christmas. Mele Kalikimaka and all that crap.”

It's just that, until we moved to Costa Rica, I spent my whole life welcoming December with the cold, crisp air of Northern California filling my lungs, and with morning fog, and steaming breath, and a frozen, maraschino cherry of a nose. Where picking out a Christmas tree meant driving up to the snowy foothills and tromping through the forrest with pine needles stuck in your hair. It meant finding the perfect blue spruce and cutting it down with a hacksaw and coming home with your hands all sticky from sap. – Not pulling up to a dirt lot behind an old abandoned banana factory and sweating through your bra while a kid with a shovel digs up a juniper bush trimmed in the familiar cone shape of a Christmas tree.

Of course, I'm trying to remain impartial. 

I'm trying to remember that there are a gajillion different ways to enjoy the holidays. And I'm trying to remember that experiencing the traditions of another culture is a gift, a rich blessing – one that shouldn't be blown off with a flippant (and, oh-so-North-American), “That's not how we do it.” But this morning one of the sparkly baubles adorning our Christmas shrub popped off and went skittering across the ceramic floor to hide under the couch. It was so obvious that the holiday was taunting me - “Your tree sucks so bad, even the ornaments want nothing to do with it.”

Instead of taking my tree out back and setting it on fire, I poured some eggnog in my coffee and went to my room to find a book. It was a gift from my friend, John Blase. He sent it to me last year, and I knew this morning that it was time to read it again...

Last year, we had gone to the states in December, and I was super stoked because I wanted my kind of Christmas. Ya know? With that chill in the air and the yummy piney Christmas tree scent. But when we got there, instead of feeling all happy and nostalgic, I felt depressed and displaced. I can't exactly say why, and I'll spare you the boring details, but let's just say it was baaaad. Christmas came and went, and all I could think of was getting back on a plane, back to Costa Rica, back to normal life. Then, one day toward the end of the trip, when I was feeling particularly sad and self-absorbed, I picked up John's little book and locked myself in the bathroom where I read it from cover to cover.

John is a story teller of a different sort. The only way to describe him is simply to say that he picks perfect words. He chooses the kind of words that breath new life into old stories, and his tender retelling of the Christmas story is no different. 

Not gonna lie, the title, Touching Wonder, makes me chuckle as it conjures some truly sophomoric jokes - but I'm just stupid like that. It's the subtitle,Recapturing the Awe of Christmas, that really sings to me. And, last year, when I read this book on the toilet (lid closed, thankyouverymuch!), that's exactly what it helped me do. 

I just needed a little reminder that the story of Jesus wasn't built around tradition, it was built aroundpeople. Real people. Living, breathing, messy people. People who may have occasionally lost sight of the importance of what was happening in their lives, but still had a role in the story.

Don't get me wrong, I will always believe that tradition is lovely and valuable. And I think there's space for Christmas trees and Santa Claus and gift giving and eggnog and eating candycanes for dinner on Christmas Eve and again for breakfast on Christmas morning (What? You don't do that?!). And I cherish the way my kids say, “Remember that time...” and then we laugh about that one time when we crammed a 20 foot tree in our teeny-tiny house, or that other time when we spent hours making a popcorn garland and then we ate it.

But I'm learning that the oldest and richest traditions of Christmas are found, not in how we hang the stockings, bit in what we bring to the table as we seek Him, year after year. It's how we chase down the star that beckons us in the night, how we bring our gifts to the alter of a baby King, how we look for the path that God would have us traverse and then choose that path above all others. It's found in how we share the story of Jesus arrival with our children and our grandchildren... Even if it is under the twinkling lights of a juniper bush on an 80° day in December. ;)