Right about now, I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. That’s because every.single.thing I’ve put in my mouth recently has been that hue (or doused in red sauce, covered in chocolate, dusted with fake orange). Pasta, rice, soups, casseroles…crunchy things, cream in an oatmeal pie…you get the idea. White Christmas = stressful Christmas = All I Want for Christmas is Some New Blue Jeans…
I know I’m not the only one that’s feeling a little “off” this Christmas. It’s been a rough lead up to the crescendo of this said season. We’ve, in our neck of the woods, as many necks of woods around us have, had weather events that half knocked our woods flat down. Literally. Flat. Down. Hurricanes and tornadoes and flooding events…and very few things and people remain standing. Sure, we will rebuild and we’re resilient and we’re #Albanystrong and new growth is on the horizon, but…it’s tough right now, y’all. The wind in our sails blew away with the last gust of Michael. And I myself am trying my very “levelled” (I’m punny, y’all!) best to harness it again.
Usually this time of the year I’m Buddy the Elf-y. If it sits still its got a string of lights or an ornament or some greenery or a manger scene on it. I love it. Like love love it. Love hanging garlands and putting up the trees and getting stressed and yelling at my family and eating lots of white things and all the things Christmas. Love it. The stress of it brings me joy in its own twisted way. Stressed backwards is desserts. Am I right?
Yet this year, we aren’t home. My Christmas boxes (all 16: see Buddy the Elf reference above) are covered in construction dust in my attic. Lonely little Marys and Josephs and baby Jesuses are enshrouded in their tissue from the year before, not getting unwrapped this year by the chubby, dimpled hands that will be a year less chubby and dimpled the next time they are unwrapped. Kitschy tchotchkes will be in the dark for a year longer than normal, jolly snowman and Santas entombed in their Sterilite lidded homes this Christmas will stay obscured for the year to follow. And it all makes me a little bit sad.
I didn’t put up a Christmas tree this year. My mother-in-law (AKA my roommate) did, so my kids are not to be pitied too much, but we didn’t get to put up our tree. I didn’t get to open our box of ornaments for my yearly walk down memory lane. The handprints of my babies all glittered up, the laminated pictures of their angelic faces from years past, the Elmer-glued popsicle sticks in the shapes of stars, Rudolphs, and Christmas trees… none of those are roosting on branches this year. Subtle reminders that years go fast and babies don’t keep and things change…my how they can change in the blink of an eye, in a storm in the night… I am missing putting hands on and heart attuned to the ornaments my darling petite paternal grandmother used to gift me over the years. Each year she’d give me an ornament that was representative in some way of the year that was. She’d sign her name and my Big Jack’s name in the sweetest scrawl with a date so that we wouldn’t forget. And every year, as I pull them out and tenderly place them on a branch, I think about her and Big Jack and memories tied to them. And I don’t forget. It’s the most tender part of decking the halls–remembering what I love about them and that I still do love them and remembering mostly that that’s what Christmas is all about.
Yep. That’s what Christmas is all about. All the love you’ve ever had, you’ve ever known, that still exists. Because love doesn’t shrink down in measure, condensed because it’s not prioritized in the dark, quiet of our minds. Any love that’s ever been, once poured out of your heart, never goes away. Sure, it may be tucked away and perhaps even derelict for some time, but it’s there. It’s there. Love is. Christmas is a time, my time, to remember it. Get it out of the dusty dark spaces and put some lights and some tinsel and even some tears on it. It’s love, y’all. That’s what God gave us on that Christmas night. Love in a manger in the form of a baby named Jesus. Immanuel. God with us. Love poured out from Him that never goes away. NEVER.
Perhaps this Christmas looks different for you, too. The first Christmas without someone who leaves a gaping wound. A literal wound. Or even the twelfth Christmas without someone. The wound still exists. But so does the love, my friend. Perhaps there aren’t any gifts under the tree. Or there isn’t even a tree at all. Or you just aren’t “feeling” it. A void. Let the love fill that vacancy. After all, love came in to the world where there was NO VACANCY, no room at the inn. It blazed right on in with a star marking its arrival and it can’t be extinguished, despite how far we as humans try to tuck it in the dark, look the other way, manipulate and molest the purity of it, cover the feelings of it up with some sort of temporary comfort on earth (ahem, like white stuff). All of those things and still:
Love made itself home here on earth.
Love is home. Love is home.
So, I’ll be home for Christmas.
Pass the mashed potatoes, roomie.
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