Un"traditional"

Christmas is always a very reflective time for me.  I despise the hokey cheer and even more the consumerism packaged as love and friendship.  To me this is not Christmas.  It might be for some people, but I wish they would just call it something else and leave my holy day to me and those who want to keep it.

This is why I don't get bent about people saying Merry Christmas or celebrating other holidays, even the made up ones.  Great.  If you don't believe what I believe then stop getting in the way.

I don't understand how...no I do understand.  I was going to say I don't get how things get passed off as part of Christmas that have nothing to do with it, but I get that and don't want to belabour it.

Instead I want to focus on what it means to me.  I don't pretend that this is some historically accurate date, or even that it wasn't placed on this date that coincided with other cultural holidays.  That doesn't change what I celebrate.

I think of a young tradesman, struggling with the stigma of a used wife, the scandal of someone else's baby.  The young woman thought to be unfaithful.  The oppressive politics of the day.  The long trip.  He couldn't leave her, legally because she was his wife and had to register too, ethically because she might have the baby any time, and morally because people were judging them.  I think of the frustration at finding no place in such need.

I think of the innkeeper who found what space he could for them.

I think of the birth, alone.  No midwife or doctor.  Did they know what to do?  Had someone prepped them before the trip, just in case?  Even knowing who the child was, doesn't wipe out human fears and concerns.  I've been in many cases where I knew God told me to be, but I had no idea how it was going to work out.

I think of the stable, how God would be born amongst livestock.  He a sheep for slaughter, himself.  I know the smells of livestock, and it can be a comforting smell of genuineness and peace...you don't understand until you've been around it for a while.  I can imagine the animals there yielding their worship to him.  Helping in their way.  Of course I don't think they did anything anthropomorphic, but I have watched creation bend and serve God.  How much more in this instance!

I think mostly of shepherds, living apart from the hustle of life and culture.  The abiding goodness that tends to grow in people like this, even as their roughness and uneducation makes them seem backward and undesirable to many.  It is a subculture of its own.  I think of their excitement.  I wonder who stayed behind with the sheep while the others ran to find the child.  I think how they are the most unlikely herald: the least likely to be believed by the educated, yet the least likely of all to lie about it or spin it.

I think of times when God has broken through my reality and blazed in front of me.  How much more in this setting!

I think of the gift that this was.  For the limitless God, the moving creating breath of God Himself to shed it all and be confined to the most helpless state of a helpless creature.  I think of what this means in the fabric of the universe.  I think of what this means to my life.

I have had real living experience of this person, this God.  And to know that this same person did these things for me is stilling, overwhelming, emotional.

It makes all the traditions of our culture meaningless at this time.  I don't care for trees or decorations or feasts or treats or gifts or family time or warm memories.  I want to slip off into the night and stare at the sky and let the moment of this event flood all over me.  I can't truly help it anyway.  It keeps flooding in even if I don't want it to.

So when you see me at this time of year you'll know why I'm quiet, why my eyes seem wetter than normal, why I keep slipping away to private places, staring out windows.  This is my Christmas.  And you're welcome to share it with me.

You can keep the rest of it.  I have no use for it.