The Serendipity of Christmas

 

Let me start with a confession that when it comes to Christmas, I am a sap.  Let the cynics mock and let the critics talk, it’s true.  My sentimentality is sugary sweet like the fudge my grandmother made.  I grew up in a family that began blaring and blasting Christmas music on our stereo the day after Thanksgiving.  It took days to decorate.  And we went through so many boxes of tinsel growing up, those tiny silver strands were woven into our shag carpet year-round, along with that green plastic grass of our Easter basket.  I know this about myself.  I still love Christmas music that speaks to not just the holly and jolly, but of the less than perfectness of life ~ because that is where God, I believe, still enters.  One popular Christmas song I find meaningful is “Where are You Christmas”.  You can go to YouTube to watch any number of singers belt this out this tune.  I think it says something profound and powerful that this music is often sung by beloved daughters of God!!  I invite you to pray the lyrics of this poem prayer with me.

Where are you, Christmas? Why can't I find you?
Why have you gone away? Where is the laughter
You used to bring me? Why can't I hear music play?
My world is changing, I'm re-arranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too?

Where are you, Christmas? Do you remember
The one you used to know? I'm not the same one
See what the time's done Is that why you have let me go?

I feel you, Christmas I know I've found you
You never fade away The joy of Christmas
Stays here inside us Fills each and every heart with love.

Where are you, Christmas? Fill your heart with love.

While I know that there is an abrupt shift from the second to third verse ~ searching for Christmas that seems lost, then suddenly finding the spirit.  How might you and I be open and curious right now?  I still tend to find Christmas in the most unlikely and unusual places and not always as I have in the past.  Yes, last year I might have found God’s love at that party or with that person or in that delicious glass of eggnog, but this year, maybe God comes in a call or card or connection to someone we have not heard from since before COVID.  This carol opens the barn door of my heart and asks me to prepare a manger size place there because the truth is I don’t always know how God will enter.  The promise of Christmas every year is that God will arrive somehow and in some way.  I pray that might be true for you this day as all of us search prayerfully for Christmas.  Amen.