still Christmas

My experience of Christmas has changed since I started attending a liturgical church. Christmas used to be synonymous with the month of December. (With my birthday thrown in midway to change things up, of course.) Now the month of December is largely taken up with the season of Advent which is, of all things, a month of FASTING, and I find myself two days after the New Year with my Christmas lights still up. Stranger yet, they're still up not because I'm procrastinating, but because they are still supposed to be up; Christmas doesn't end till this Saturday.


There is no feeling to match the feeling of anticipation. Crushes are giddier and often more fun than relationships, and buying your textbooks more exciting than actually sitting down and studying them. Pregnancy is dreamier and rosier time than the midnight feedings that follow, and engagement is often more intoxicating than marriage.

But less real and less good.

You smell the meal, and your mouth waters, and you enjoy the sensation of your mouth watering. But it is watering FOR the meat. You are dreaming OF the baby. You are intoxicated ABOUT the man.

I had a high school English teacher who taught us that gratitude was the key to happiness. Looking at what you have and appreciating it. His suggestion was that if we were ever unhappy, we ought to take a hammer and pound our thumb with it as hard as we could. He swore that when the pain finally stopped, we'd be so happy not to be in pain, that we'd forget whatever we were unhappy about before.

Because of him, I often stop and thank God on days that I don't have a headache that I don't have a headache. That's been a good habit, and I'm grateful for his advice. Realizing how bad things could be puts things in perspective. Over the years I've added things like being thankful not to be in a war zone or not to have a dying child. Not that you're forsaken by God if that's where you are, but that if you're not there, you really ought to be grateful enough to notice.

But I think that being thankful for not being in pain only takes you so far. Like looking forward to what you don't yet have, it's a negative appreciation, somehow empty and unreal.

Rather, I want to enjoy what is actually happening, all these things in my life that have been long coming, long anticipated, and are now actually here. My babies. My husband.

And, of course, Christmas. The fast is over, and the feast is come. So:

"Alleluia. Unto us a child is born: O come, let us adore him.
Alleluia."

May the rest of your week be merry and bright!

peace of Christ to you,
-Jessica