We Need a Little Christmas

When I was younger (back in the days of VHS tapes!), my family always found time to pull out The Muppet Family Christmas just after school closed for the Christmas break. [If, by some remote chance, you haven't seen this remarkable film... skip the following spoilers and go the next paragraph.] I remember being amazed when the Sesame Street gang showed up at Fozzie's mother's farmhouse, being fascinated by the efforts of the Swedish Chef to cook Big Bird for dinner, and wondering how Miss Piggy would ever get out of the snowstorm that almost made her miss the party. Great jokes and songs abound throughout the show– it famously concludes with a cast of hundreds of Muppets singing carols by the fire– but the opening number seems especially appropriate this year.

I've had a good Advent... some gathering momentum in prayer, some beautiful services and festive celebrations with my community and the broader Holy Cross family, and a much deeper sense of the holiness in this time of year. But I do (still) need a little Christmas. The weather has been oddly warm lately, both in central Massachusetts and in southern New Jersey, and there's no snow in either locale. I've been involved in an unusual streak of bad news and sorrowful situations this week– two cancer diagnoses (an uncle's sister and a friend's close friend), a wake and a funeral for an aunt's brother, and a friend's ongoing struggle with depression and isolation made paradoxically sharper by the pressures of Christmas celebrations. The decorations are in place, the lights and ornaments are on the tree, and the table is being set (we're hosting 18 relatives for Christmas dinner tomorrow night), but I don't have that Christmas feeling that I've so easily recognized and savored in years past. Instead of gleeful anticipation, I've occasionally noticed myself as worn-out as Molly, our 15-year-old Beagle, who spends most of her day sleeping, sometimes in positions that defy presumed definitions of comfort and peace.

I had some time to meditate and reflect on all this at length during a 13-mile run this morning around some local neighborhoods and parks. It's long been familiar terrain, but I can recall when I was mapping and testing these routes for the first time, back when 13 miles was the limit of my training range and my athletic ambitions. Would I have done anything differently if I had known what my future held? Would I have had more confidence? Would the thrill of pushing limits have lost its appeal if replaced by the certainty that I'd one day achieve my dream of finishing the Boston Marathon? What did I gain by not knowing the end of the story?

Perhaps the grace that I'm receiving at the close of Advent 2011 is a connection with those unaware of the end of the Christmas story. The people of Israel who heard Isaiah's prophecies didn't know that they would actually come to pass. The shepherds and magi who followed a star and eluded a jealous king didn't know exactly what they would find, or how their lives could be changed, in the encounter at the end of their journeys to Bethlehem. No small measure of what I sense in the tough news this week, and those who bear its burden, is that they don't know how (or if) such grave issues will be resolved in a positive way.

So while I "need a little Christmas," I'm not sure where I'll find it. I don't know how the story of Advent 2011 will transition into a new chapter of my life, or the lives of those whom I hold dear. Yet I feel that I'm in good company with all who, throughout the course of history, have waited, hoped, prayed, and searched for an encounter with God in the midst of their humanity. Wherever you may be this year, and with whomever you may celebrate, I pray that you have a delightful Christmas, filled with all the blessings of this time of year.