Let's Talk About Christmas, Shall We?

Let’s talk about Christmas, shall we?

For the better part of my adult life, I’ve struggled a great deal with Christmas.  As much as I enjoyed Christmas as a child, I’ve dreaded Christmas as an adult.  It’s been too much for too long.  The season is always so full of unmet expectations that I’ve found myself tending to grieving more that rejoicing

But something seems to have happened over the last few years – four, to be exact.  It seems Advent must be a part of my chemical DNA, and I didn’t know it.  So, I haven’t lived into the season the way I was created to.  Raised as a Baptist, most of my life has been lived with no knowledge of Advent, so there’s been no appreciation for darkness, waiting, pondering, living in anticipation of…like a baby born with no pregnancy, I’ve been expected to enter Christmas without the womb.  Maybe that’s it.  I don’t really know, but the shift began in 2009.  Even before the end of October that year, I found myself once again in the funk of Christmas—it happened no matter how determined I was that it wouldn’t happen. No matter how hard I tried to escape it, the Christmas funk settled on me as surely as Christmas Past haunted Scrooge. 

Then one Sunday morning toward the end of November, 2009, Andy Parker made a statement in his sermon that began the shift: “This isn’t Christmas; it’s the season of Advent, when we search for the Light.”

Something mystical and spiritual was planted inside my heart with that statement, and I began on December 1 working each day in a small art journal I entitled, The ABC’s of Advent.  I went on an adventure of the soul, looking for Light.  And the very first entry began with a prayer for a “shift” in my relationship with Christmas.

The next Christmas was so painful I skipped it altogether, and chose instead to go on Sabbatical, a solitary trip for almost three weeks.  I didn’t come home until after the first of the year.  The resistance before the breakthrough - perhaps that time gave me the “space” I needed for something “new” to come.  I’m still not sure what happened, but the last two Christmases have been delicious.  And nothing’s really changed.

So, I sat down this morning and just pondered “the shift”.  My personal experience of the Christian journey has been one of subtraction, instead of addition.  It seems to me that the one constant call of Christ is to “Let it go, give it up, lay it down, less is more, to die is gain.” And I have fought that call every step of the way, only to find that life really does come more fully as we let go of our expectations of “what’s it all supposed to be about anyway?”

I think, for me, Advent and (believe it or not) my Pagan friends have supplied the missing link in learning to respect the darkness and to allow it.  Christianity (as I’ve previously known it) focuses so much on the Light that it seems to disallow the darkness, the mystery, the womb-time.  I just finished re-reading “Longing for the Darkness”.  Interesting how I long for the darkness as I look for the Light.  Paradox, isn’t it.  But the darkness is so necessary to the Light.  It’s only in the juxtaposition of the two that we can even see light, which says to me, “Pay attention.  Darkness is part of the equation.  It’s as necessary as the Light it.”

There is a darkness that’s necessary and life giving.  It seems to me that for the most part, our Christian Scriptures tend to ignore that darkness and speak only of the darkness of evil.  I am a child both of the darkness and the light.  And Advent gives me the time I need to gestate the new life of Light.  At least, that’s what it feels like. Nicodemus asked Jesus if he had to re-enter the mother’s womb in order to be born again.  I think Jesus might have smiled as he continued his conversation with Nick, because I suspect that’s exactly what’s required for new birth.  We have to enter into the Womb of Advent in order to be able to receive the Light of Christmas.  Meister Eckhart indicated that we even have to become a Womb in order for Spirit to give birth.  How could we overlook that—in order to be born again, we have to die first.  And Advent, for me, is that preparation.  All of the Christmas hoopla is too much to be flung at us for 3 months.  My gosh, it’s like a 36-hour labor! 

I so appreciate Advent at St. Timothy’s.  There’s no hoopla—no extended season of carols, no decorations until “Just the right moment”.  It makes for a shorter labor.  Christmas needs a time of preparation, quietness, solitude, darkness, resistance, breathing, and of breakthrough.  Like a little baby being born after the dark time in its Mother’s womb, Advent gives me much needed space to prepare for the brightness of Christmas.  It takes time for my heart to be prepared to receive the Christ Child, time to prepare the Inn so there will be room for Him to be born.  Advent slows me down and gives me time to rest in the middle of all the hoopla.  It shortens the labor and makes birth easier.