These Are My JOTtings...

Christmas in Rococo

How is it possible that someone, who loves Christmas as much as I do, gets so overwhelmed and overwrought the way I do in December of every year?

Christmas is supposed to be this time of peace and joy. Sit by the fireside with a cup of warm cocoa or some other warm drink, preferably nonalcoholic for my tastes because I don't want to take the edge off the enjoyment of the season. And that's just it,...it seems that there is so much...that the edge needs to be taken off...in some way.

It seems that the other eleven months of the year does more for my experience of Christmas than the one month of December can do.

January has become the denouement of Christmas in recent years. January is the time for experiencing Christmas the way December was intended to celebrate the holiday. In January everybody else (or at least most everybody else) has gone back to their lives of normalcy after the rush of activity and the money crush of the Christmas season.

In a word the mere mention of Christmas in my heart has nothing to do with the world's presentation of Christmas during the Holiday Season. I care about the peace of everything being right to the heart of my life. I care of about the peace of everything being right in every relationship of my life. I care about music that lifts the heart, the emotion, the mind and the spirit.

Eleven days into December and I have sung the "Hallelujah Chorus" on two separate occasions. I've been in attendance at another Christmas concert. We spent all afternoon Friday in a local shopping mall. I have a Christmas tree in residence. There are Christmas lights throughout the house and many strands adorn the outside of the house, including one tree and one bush.

What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing.

The concern is merely...how do we process all that is good?

It is no wonder that some individuals ignore the holiday season to whatever degree they are able to avoid it. Some do not believe in God at all, and all of this hype over a perceived mythology is superfluous to the Nth degree. Those of us, who do believe that Jesus is a real Person, Who was born in a manger a little over two thousand years ago, find the entire process of Christmas to be the equivalent of a month-long feast of everything that we enjoy. I love ice-cream, but if you tell me that is all that I will be allowed to eat for an entire month, then I will start to hate ice-cream, until the enjoyment of ice-cream returns to the level that is pleasant for me.

I love to stay in contact with friends and family at Christmas, but that has a hook in itself. Will I send a Christmas card to everyone, who feels like they need a Christmas card from me? Will I give a Christmas present to everyone, who feels like they deserve a Christmas present from me?

Will I do all the right things that I am supposed to do at Christmas time? Or will I still be loved, even if I miss something or someone in all of the everything that abounds for our enjoyment and supposed good?

There are elements of Christmas that bring me great comfort and peace throughout the year. In that regard I say a hearty "Amen" to the words of the restored Ebenezer Scrooge in the last few pages of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

I think if my heart is centered on The Person of Jesus of Nazareth and His intentions for my life, whether anybody else in the world believes the way I believe or not, then I believe I can "keep it all the year."

The music...
The lights...
The smells...
The flavors...
The activities...
The people...

All are secondary to knowing and living my life's purpose in agreement with The One, Who made me and Who came to Earth as The virgin-born Child of the Bethlehem manger.

May you enjoy peace this December, whether you celebrate a holiday or not. Thank you for the friendship that you afford to me. That is a greater gift than words can express.