You know how some years you just don’t get around to doing any decorating of your own home because you’re too wrapped up (pun intended) with holiday season busyness at church and in your community?
I did that last year, and it was fine. For me, it’s fine to do that sometimes if I think about my own needs and priorities (and I don’t have children, so I can do that).
But this year, I need Advent. I need it very much. I pray for God to dwell among us in a way that we can feel and access in our responses to living in a broken world. I need the journey to Bethlehem. Dear God, I need angels smashing through the wall saying, “HEY. DON’T FREAK OUT BUT GOD IS GOING TO DO THIS HUGE THING, ARE YOU UP FOR IT?” I need a nobody little girl from an oppressed community to say, “Yes, as a matter of fact I am, and let me spontaneously bring forth an astonishing statement about what God is doing here, let me sing it, let me lay it down.”
I need lights and angels and creche sets around the house and I need to pad down to my kitchen every morning like a little kid and open the Advent calendar for the day and squeal at what’s behind the flap of paper.
Some years, like a succulent, I can draw moisture for a dry season out of the ground upon which I stand with my people. This year, though, I need to fling a lot of tinsel around, light the smelly candles, wrap the bannisters in garland. I need to get a party going for the Christ child. Can’t skip it this year.
So in the spirit of “Physician, heal thyself,” I am saying, “Minister, deck thy halls first.”
If you need to.
But now would be a good time to stop and ask yourself if you need to and not look up on December 26th and feel a sad pang that you did all that to make Christmas deep and beautiful for your community but left your own home barren of effort.
I have my first ever tree up. I usually travel her for christmas but now I live here and a I have been bah-humbug about trees, but now I embrace the pagan gleefully. Lights up and crȇches out. May get a wreath for the door. And maybe electric candles for the windows. [I have done all that and it feels really good. I’m so glad you got a tree! Home for the holidays! – PB]
Oof. I remember the first Christmas Eve after my daughter was born. We’d barely gotten a tree a couple days before. After leading the evening services, with her in the church nursery, I brought her home and carried her asleep from the car to her bed. Then went downstairs and bawled and bawled as I tried to put the ornaments on the tree and wrap presents. I think I’d done four funerals that month.
It took me a couple years, but I finally insisted I would travel NOWHERE on Christmas Day. After spending the month “putting on Christmas” for everyone else (and having a church-working-musician spouse who usually helps put on Christmas for a whole ‘nother congregation), I need to know Christmas comes for me, too.
This is a good word, PB. Thank you. [You are very welcome! Blessings. – PB]
I have been too “busy” to do my yearly tradition, which is to decorate a plain wreath for the door. I like to dry roses and find other things that will keep through January. I don’t usually do a tree or many decorations, since my husband is Jewish and often struggles with Christmas. Thanks for the reminder.
Thank you! I needed this reminder today.
This is why I insist on putting up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. Some people think its too early, but if my tree isn’t up before the first Sunday in advent, it won’t happen.
And I need those evenings with a sparking tree to cheer my spirits. Especially since our family is now so small and scattered so far apart,
Thanks for the encouragement! It’s been a rough month with pastoral care and I forced myself to put on the Xmas music and decorate the tree, and darned if I didn’t catch myself feeling kind of joyful. I needed that.