What Is It I Want From Christmas

It’s two days before Christmas, 2018. So far, this Christmas season has been better than the ones in the last five years. Partially because a couple of weeks ago I decided that this year I actually wanted to do Christmas … in the house. You see, about seven years ago we began to hold our Christmas celebrations in our entertainment space – a full-on, Disney-style saloon that my husband created in the barn behind our house. We started doing that because for one year we had all of our kids, and grandkids and my dad for Christmas together and it just seemed easier.

Correction: it didn’t seem easier … it was easier. It meant I didn’t have to clean the house up for visitors, which had become a gargantuan task. And it meant there was a lot more flexibility in seating arrangements. Plus, decorating the saloon for Christmas could be done in one afternoon with the help of one of our employees/close friends. My kids had said they wanted the decorations in the house like when they were little … but no one wanted to help. That didn’t work for me – so we went a different route.

And it did work great – especially for that first year when my dad was there. He was in a wheelchair by then and our house wasn’t really suitable for it. We had to get the chair up a step in order to enter the front door. And once inside, he was pretty much confined to the living room and not everyone could be in there at the same time. Especially with the tree and other decorations taking up space. The saloon meant that everyone was in one big room, and there weren’t any stairs to hamper ingress and egress.

By the time Christmas came around the next year, my dad had gone home to be with the Lord; the last of my kid’s grandparents was gone. And, two out of the four kids had made plans to be somewhere else on Christmas, the third one was only able to join us for a little while, and the youngest wouldn’t be staying with us. We, and our kids, had quite a few friends who didn’t have family in the area. So, we decided that we would have a Christmas open house in the saloon, inviting anyone who didn’t want to spend the day alone to drop by between set hours for food and drinks and general fellowship. We ended up doing that for three years running. Until it became too much.

With my dad gone, and the kids scattered, Christmas had become a time of melancholy for me. For the first time in my life, I was just going through the motions and internally hating the holidays! I had tried to figure out what was wrong, why it was happening year after year, without success. And, it started like that again this year. But, something changed. Cuddling with my husband one morning, with tears streaming down my face, I realized that the things I used to take joy in at Christmas time had gradually slipped away. I wanted to look forward to things – the annual stuff, like visiting Disneyland to see the decorations, setting up a tree, etc. And, I had a sudden epiphany – I actually wanted to do Christmas and the timing was perfect.

Nine months ago, we moved out of the house we’d lived in for all 38 years of our marriage and gradually settled in to the house where my husband grew up, which we inherited from his mother. The two homes are literally catty-cornered from each other at the end of a cul-de-sac, and since we haven’t sold our first home, it’s been a very gradual move. Now there was nothing in the way of me doing Christmas in my new home in any way I wanted to. My husband agreed to help me and within a week I had everything I needed to open my home to friends for an afternoon of food and fellowship. It’s made all the difference in the world to my perspective. For the first time in years, I’m not hating Christmas. Oh, I still get melancholy at times, especially when my mind travels back to Christmases when the kids were little, and the tears come more readily than before. Plus, there’s no telling what will happen on Christmas Day, which for the last few years, has been the day with the most tears. But, I think I finally have found out what I want Christmas to be: a season of anticipating what’s next while fondly remembering what’s in the past.

Isn’t that what it was for those shepherds on the hillside? As they listened to the angels did they feel the glow of anticipation? As they stood at the manger and saw the baby Jesus did they remember the past and all the prophecies that told of his coming? Can I do the same? When the radio station plays Away in a Manger or Silent Night, can I hark back to when my kids were little and we talked about the promise of the baby Jesus? When I hear O Little Town of Bethlehem or Angels We Have Heard on High, will I let my heart warm with the anticipation for the return of the Resurrected Jesus?