What Christmas Is All About

I've had a hard time getting into the spirit of Christmas this year. With Vicki's death a couple of weeks ago, and one of my stepdaughters refusing to communicate with us for the past several months, my heart is too sore to rejoice. And then I found out I have to work both Friday and Saturday, so I won't be able to spend that time with my other stepdaughter and her husband who are arriving soon to stay with us through the weekend. As if I wasn't bummed enough already.

Today I decided that since I couldn't drum up much enthusiasm for the season in my own heart, I'd focus on other people's joy instead. I went to the early Christmas Eve service that James gears toward children, and I sat with some of my favorite little buddies and sang carols and watched as they tore off huge hunks of bread for Communion and then scrunched up their faces when they dipped it into the grape juice. Bread in grape juice? It was a really strange supper for some of them!

My favorite service on Christmas Eve has always been Lessons & Carols, and every year I get all dressed up and go greet the birth of Jesus with wondrous music and candlelight… But I'm skipping that service tonight. In fact, James is at church leading Lessons & Carols right now. And I'm home in my pajama pants, making a chocolate whisky bundt cake for dessert tomorrow, watching Prancer, and waiting for Jesse & Mike to show up. Their favorite service is the late one at 11pm—a meditative time of candlelight and communion—so I'm going to join them at that one and let their joy buoy my spirits.

As I sat with the children this afternoon and listened to one little girl tell about how the best news she's ever heard is that "we can walk on tiny earthquakes" (according to her there are "tiny earthquakes" happening all the time under our feet, but we can walk on them without falling—she must watch the Discovery Channel)—which is truly good news when you think about it!—it occurred to me that maybe this is what Christmas is really all about anyway: other people's joy, not just my own feelings. If my Christmas happens to feel like Charlie Brown's when he puts the ornament on the tree and it bends under the weight—"Everything I touch gets ruined!"—so what? That's not the point of the season. My feelings aren't what makes Christmas successful or not. "Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of a great joy. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord." That's what Christmas is all about, Dianne.