Unlike All Other Days

Some say we've made this day a pageant. All the trimmings and toil, all the tinsel and tasks that were not part of the first Christmas day. The day no one called Christmas at first. And some say it's all unnecessary...that all of what we've made Christmas is really nothing of what Christmas is really made of. Some say all this harried hoopla for one day is a failed attempt to create a Christmas that emanated from an uncreated One.

And I have spouted the same, and stood in stalwart solidarity with the true meaning of Christmas. I do agree that we've all crowned the day, the season, a celebrity, but have not truly celebrated.

And yet I love the ways we add onto life in the seemingly dead of December. I love that we string lights on dying trees and set tables with golden glasses amid dusty floors and dirty kitchen sinks. I love that we get giddy with giving and lay awake like kids anticipating the heart-pumping tumble down the stairs on Christmas morning. And we melt in the smile on just one precious face when we hand over a Christmas surprise.

I do love it. There I've said it. I love "keeping" Christmas, but not because it slaps frosting on this caved-in cake that is our reality, our real experience. I love it because it marks this day, this one day, as different from all the others. It hallows and honors and halts all of our mundane so that hope breaks through the frozen ground and sprouts this wild, beautiful shoot that has the power to shift every scene from death to life. On this day, because we call it Christmas, we bend over hot ovens, crouch under tired Christmas trees, dress in tinsel and croon carols. Because we gather imperfect families around perfect tables...because we stop and open a shiny box or empty an old Christmas stocking, we in effect say that this moment, this day, is unlike all other days. This day, the impossible could be made possible, because it can...because it was.

Through twinkling lights and clumps of ribbon we can remember that tides can turn, the atmosphere can suddenly change, and the rescuer can bust through the locked door and carry us into the light. And in fact, the day shakes us awake to whisper close, like a daddy nudging a sleeping child, "Get up! get up! I've come and brought you gifts!"

We are a cluttered people, a whole stream of beat up, cynical, hurting, unbelieving souls moving on a conveyor belt, clutching for hope but keeping our nose to the floor, our gaze fixed on small things. So average days are like perpetual blind spots. We need a very unaverage, above average day to shoot holes through that dim hopeless reality. And that's Christmas day. Yes, the very first Christmas didn't need any of this because the Author of All Hope, the True Rescuer, the Gift to End All Gifts...arrived. He left more splendor than we could ever manufacture and came cradled in our muck and mud to split the dark and eradicate inevitable doom. There was no adornment needed for that. Simple shepherd songs and angel conversations conveyed it perfectly.

But today, down the years from that first Christmas day, we need some jarring and some jingling. We need to lay still and wait for our Daddy to touch our shoulder, bend over and kiss us awake out of nightmares and hear his voice saying, barely containing the joy spilling out, "Get up! Get up! I've come and brought you gifts!" We need a day unlike all other days, and so we make Christmas day. And I love it.