We took down our Christmas tree last night. We are not an organized people, the DeVauls, so there are still plenty of decorations up, waiting to be boxed and stored til next December. But the trash man was coming today, and we needed to get that tree to the curb.
When we set the tree up, we make a big deal out of it. I am one of those sticklers for a real tree. I am not judging you for your fake tree. Well, I probably am a little bit, but only a little bit, because I really believe you should do whatever you need to do to enjoy your holiday season. You don’t need me to micromanage your joy.
But I am difficult and stubborn and ritualistic about how we do Christmas. We have found our Christmas tree place, so it will be nearly impossible for me to be convinced to look elsewhere next year. We will get a tree the first week of Advent, we will make hot chocolate and put on pajamas. My wife is in charge of the lights. I am in charge of the music. We listen to the same music every year. The kids insist that the first song be Bob Dylan singing “Must be Santa”. I have indoctrinated them well.
There are no good songs for taking down Christmas decorations. That’s what I have realized, and I hate it. We have no ritual for stripping the tree and dumping it in the street. I grabbed the box for the decorations and called the kids over. My wife didn’t even bother looking up. “What should we listen to?” I asked. Nobody had any answers. “Christmas music?” I suggested. My daughter just said, “Nah. Christmas is over.”
That it is. The way we build up to Christmas can give us all holiday hangovers. I gained four pounds, all in my face apparently. And the plans and the people and the busyness of it all. When I’m in the zone I love it all. But it still feels like something from which I need to recover. But even though the season is over, the effects of Christmas are meant to linger. The event Christians celebrate – Jesus coming into the world, God with us, God’s love present and active – the effects of that reverberate beyond any specific date and inform how we are meant to look at the rest of the year.
Indeed, “God with us” is not a seasonal condition – Christmas reminds us that God’s presence and solidarity with our humanity is a daily reality rather than a future promise.
The past few weeks I’ve been preaching on Jesus as a baby and Jesus as an adolescent – we see both in the Gospel According to Luke. Luke is fanatically insistent that we recognize Jesus as Lord when he is a baby, and Jesus as Lord when he is an adolescent. This is no accident. Luke knows that we are apt to attach the power of Jesus to his later deeds and teachings – to his accomplishments. Luke counters our instincts by insisting that we recognize God’s presence and holiness in Jesus as a baby and as an adolescent.
This means that we have to expand our understanding of where we see holiness, of where we see God, every day. As I have said many times, babies are functionally useless. They have achieved nothing. And adolescents are known primarily for being difficult – which Jesus certainly is in the one story we have of him during that time. Luke is telling us that before Jesus has “become useful” before he has “grown up” he is God’s presence. This is no minor detail. It means we have to rethink the conditions we have created for God being with us.
Of course this is what Jesus is doing in the first place: We say we want to see God, and Jesus shows up. We don’t want to find God in Jesus, because Jesus is human, and humans are disappointing, frustrating, and flawed. And most of us smell funny. But if Jesus is God then we have to expand our understanding of where God is, of how God works, of what God is doing. We have to open ourselves up to holiness being in all sorts of places. We have to reassess where and how and in whom we see God, see God’s blessing.
God’s presence in your life is not seasonal or conditional. God is not waiting for you to be the right kind of person, nor are they waiting for a specific season in your life: God is present and active and in your corner, right now. Christmas is over. That’s fine. The truth of Christmas is that God is with you, and your recognition of that does not need to end with the season.
If you took seriously that God is with you right now, how would it transform the way you experience this moment?
This year started auspiciously with a couple of terrorist attacks in our country, and our incoming president repeatedly musing about annexing Canada. One of my uncles died, my daughter had a birthday, and we had the biggest snowstorm in decades here in Cincinnati – something that is both beautiful and dangerous. Not all of these things are bad, it’s just a lot. And now my old home Los Angeles is burning. I am not actually able to speak coherently about that at this point. Happy New Year!
I guess I’m saying we are being catapulted into 2025. Things will not be slowing down any time soon. Life will keep happening in all the best, worst, and most mundane ways. How will I approach this time? Christmas is over, but can I carry anything from it with me as I go into this next season?
So, we took down the tree. And nobody could decide what music to play. So, I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas record anyway. There’s no singing, it’s all instrumental, it’s a little moody and holy and sometimes melancholy. And as we stripped our tree, I asked the kids what their favorite part of Christmas was, and they all answered quickly and warmly. Glimmers of joy. Christmas is over, but that doesn’t mean we have to forget it. Maybe I just found a new ritual.
