its cold...will Christmas be enough?

I find the older I get I wonder each year if "Christmas" will be enough to "pick me up" from the onset of winter blahs and foreboding. And it feels like all the disappointments and anxieties of my life glom on to this cold, windy, snowy time of year.

Now, I like snow! I love it when a good snow storm blankets everything for two reasons. 1) its beautiful 2) it forces people to slow down en masse. Like Aug 14 2004 when we had the huge black out and everyone just went outside and related. That's what snow storms do. People tend to complain about them, but I think they are a gift.

But the just plain cold, windy winter days seem to take their toll. They rarely are a day when I say "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Sure, I can speak it out loud and I do from time to time. But I don't mean it.

There is one day a week in the cold, windy days that I look forward to. The gathering of brothers and sisters to worship God. I love that. It is an oasis, maybe we could call it a winter sabbath, in the blahy winter days. And, visiting with people at Coco's during the week does the same for me. I look forward to those visits. Times spent in connecting around life and God rather than short snippets of conversation on the road to accomplishing so many tasks that each seem to run into one another.

Since I was a child, I was programmed to expect that Christmas would pump me up for the long darkness of winter. But as I get older, there doesn't seem to be enough. I have come to realize that Christmas is a staged event or a reenactment by the community of faith to help us be confirmed in faith that God is breaking into this world right now with the gift of love known as Jesus Christ. God's own flesh and blood. The savior of all that aches in us and ails us. December 25 is not suppose to be in and of itself the "pump me up." It is the reminder of that which God is doing that is aeons beyond just being a pump me up.

Christmas started in the northern Europe Christian context centuries ago because they felt what we feel in the same climate...foreboding, anxious and the blahs. So, they decided the best time of year for them to be reminded of God's present and future action was at the time of year when most people seemed to hit the bottom of life. They used it to plant deep in their soul that God is breaking into our lives and into the world all the time. Christmas is only the window through which our memories, our senses, our hearts, our faith is reinforced to expect it and to discern it. Don't expect the Christmas season to be the salve for your ache and ailments of life. Use Christmas as a window into the wonderful gift that God is giving throughout our lives.