Why I Hated (a Stand-Alone) Christmas and You Should Too

S o, perhaps the word hate is a bit harsh, but honesty is a thing that happens only when the ice of pretentiousness is broken. I can already imagine the responses for this article's negative tone, but let us not mistake facing reality with negativity. We should never fear to face reality, for the world of the Bible is the real world. Wisdom shows us that there comes a point of reckoning when we can either choose to engage the world as it is or only as we wish it were. And our chance for engagement only seems more imminent with the passing months.

Christmas Keeps Coming

Pull down the lights one by one, dump the tree, then fill up your trash bags with the results of the holiday feasting, and somewhere in the depth of your mind there is a looming sense of inevitability—Christmas will be back for another round. Like an abused DVD we are forced to repeat the uncomfortable scenes, over and over, every eleven months. Christmas is always just leaving or approaching and forcing logically-thinking adults to bring out the worst in themselves.

The Definition Of Insanity

If you are the average hard working individual, your monthly spending reads something like:

AUG: Making Ends Meet

SEP: Making Ends Meet

OCT: Making Ends Meet

But once Black Friday and December come around, we become insatiable mall zombies with credit cards activated and bank accounts depleted for all possible cash. In the midst of our relocation under the nearest bridge, we are told that these actions somehow have a holy purpose:

“ Jesus is the reason for the season man”

“What does buying your nephew an X-Box have to do with Jesus?”

“X-Box represents myrrh, duh”

“What?”

To make matters worse atop of this hypocrisy, we encourage all the neighborhood kids by telling them they can expect twenty-four hour surveillance and illegal entry into their homes by some fat old man that watches them sleep? What is any level-headed adult to do?

The False Option

We do what I expect the majority of us feel forced to: grin and bear it. Just put up the tree because you have to make the place look “Christmas-y.” Just buy the gifts so the folks you secretly hate do not actually figure it out this year. Just attend all the parties, and dinners, and awkward gatherings, and just get it over with. All the while the people that do these things feel less and less in the “Christmas Spirit” as it were. Anyone that finds themselves with an inability for instant happiness is considered odd, depressed or lonely (please). Just try singing about roasting chestnuts as you watch a half-hour of the evening news and see what happiness that brings.

This season has brought me into conversation with more and more adults hopelessly trapped under the weight of this “joyous” season. Since they fail to see how flying reindeer applies to real life, they commonly resign themselves with the words: “Christmas is for kids.” Advertisers would agree but I call foul, the advertisers are mistaken.

The Answer is Advent

Christmas is only meant to be a jewel on the necklace of Advent. The ancient Christian tradition of Advent, meaning “arrival” or “coming” is the season which prepares us for Christmas. The focus of the season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (First Advent) and the anticipation of His rescue of the saints (Second Advent) and reign on Earth. It is the beginning of the Church year and celebrated from the Sunday following Thanksgiving to the Sunday preceding Christmas. It is not a celebration of Christmas, rather Christmas is a celebration of Advent Hope and Expectation. Christmas sometimes feels messed up by itself because our forbears never intended it to be.

Greater Expectations

It reminds me of the couple that spent their entire honeymoon on a cramped futon figuring it must have been the best their parents could afford on the luxurious resort, only to discover their last night that their magnificent suite had been on the other side of the door. They had spent their nights in the foyer! Greater treasures lie within the winter season for believers in Jesus Christ.

Christmas can be a meaningful holiday but only as part of a whole. Surely department store gift cards and gingerbread men are not our greatest hopes for the season. Our Advent Expectation is that God Almighty will soon crush the corrupt systems of power and sin. Advent says, 'the world is messed up, but watch the skies because it will not be that way for long.

Advent is the hope of Malachi 4:2, that “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.”

So perhaps instead of waiting for Santa Clause Christmas Eve, we would be better served awaiting the rising of our healing sun. 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel.'

In Him,

Jean-Marc

A Familial Christmas: A Poem

A Familial Christmas: A Poem
by Jean-Marc Saint Laurent 

At my family Christmas that happens annually,

There are places for my siblings, Satan, and me.

The prince of this world, this serpent of ground,

is on special duty when family's in town.

He is never invited but comes nonetheless,

and present with us in our familiar distress.

Our tree stands resplendent, brighter than our hearts,

and he takes this opportunity to rip us apart.

He adores our festive table with food everywhere,

Suggesting his malice between swallows and stares,

and giggles and grumbles and guffaws and gravy,

by tempting the men and pushing the ladies.

Swear us? Hardly, it be not our tea

but he injects venom in our insecurities.

Little Sister's depressed and wants not to stay,

Big Brother's sarcasm kills the mood o' the day,

Mother's mad from the hours she's worked all the years,

misused and abused, she's lost all her tears.

“Hardly-there father,” says older sister the host,

“Would be more of a father if he were a ghost.”

“Have some Christmas Spirit!” is Uncle's attack,

with a sin list so long it'd fit on five plaques,

“Just look at my kids,” and the demons arise,

piercing hearts, with bellowing, whining and cries.

Insults from Cousin 2 fly sharper than tacks,

with Cousin 1 all the ready to stab them in backs.

The in-laws offend with each poor utterance,

resting with excuse of supposed ignorance.

Old friends come to visit with faces so pleasant,

to destroy and defame people not present.

But by the kids' table is Cousin number 3,

more simple and kind than others could be.

No deceit in his words, no plans on his mind,

God-given innocence puts evil in-bind.

To say what you mean and to mean what you say,

are the proper tools to put devils away.

Seeing his heart so clean, we are reminded of sin,

And the carefree children, we each had been.

Those days have long left, those days are long lost,

Yet sin was the creature he killed on the cross;

Our Jesus divine of wintry season,

and gives all our days a' filling of reason.

So let us not hope in people or sights,

or glitter, or tree, or presents or lights,

or sleigh bells or Clauses or chocolate chips,

or promises and disappointments in our relationships.

May we look to the One above whom there's no other,

and maybe He'll keep us from killing each other.

Merry Christmas from my family to yours,

Jean-Marc

The Weakness of Happiness

The child that avoids confrontation by sitting with teacher.

The freshman that avoids upperclassman hallways.

The professional that avoids the venomous receptionist.

I have lived them all and know sloth when I see it.

Sloth is a sickness

Humid, it came in a middle school-aged sweat on a weekday morn years ago. Having been pursued by an unrecognizable few on ten-speeds to the point of imminent pain, I awoke abruptly to that feeling we term relief, which in minutes gave way to the crushing realization that my life actually resembled my nightmare. I had become an unwitting accomplice in embarrassing an unstable older student and he threatened me regularly with retribution. That dark morning in my bedroom is yet marked as the point I discovered that the decisions I made could lead to external and therefore internal imbalance—that feeling we term stress, the great unifier of time and people.

Waking yesterday, internal vertigo came on cue before coffee and without nightmarish persuasion. What did I fear? Nothing and yet everything. What was there not to fear when each day held potential for terror: moral err, depression, the encroaching wicked world and death. And I, being a Christian and a preacher-defender of God's Word would surely find myself once more at odds with popular opinion and the neighboring heathens; and therefore ostracized and misunderstood as a bigot to someone. If I could not live happy with peace of mind, why wake up?

No Pain, No Gain

Then I heard the phrase over the radio: spiritual athletics. It was a term used to describe the view of some fourth and fifth century saints. They saw the spirit as worthy of training as the body. And as the physical self required resistance to grow strong, so the spirit required struggle; it was for this reason they chose to live in the desert of Sinai, the epitome of struggle. But I am sure you would rather skip through a field of daisies right?

So let us skip in the field of daisies! Just be sure to put on your sneakers first, as they allow for the best skipping. Wait, no sneakers? That is a shame since the best tennis shoes will cost a pretty penny. So off to work you go, and if your luck is as good as mine has been, your overseeing manager will be a slave- driving psychopath that will make tranquility a near impossibility. Suddenly bliss-filled sessions of skipping seem less attractive when they can only take place during select late night and weekend hours. Maybe that is why Jesus never promised happiness—he would have been lying.

Get Right or Get Left

The word we now translate as “happy” first meant “lucky” or “favored by fortune” when originally used by the Greeks and later by the Europeans—happiness is a condition of circumstance. Our hope as Christians is not that our circumstances will make us feel “happy” or “lucky” but that we would find joy in the immutable, unchanging nature of God. A preoccupation with being happy is an obsession with a non-existent world, like the millions of poor souls in 2009 that reported they would have rather stayed watching a particular movie than return to their troublesome lives in this world.

“In this world you will have trouble” said Jesus in John 16:33, so to not expect trouble in it would be to not expect contact in American Football; life is a collision sport.

My cousin having recently returned from a military boot camp in Texas, recounts the trying details of his experience to the surprise of many. But when I think of it now, I wonder what would be more of a shock: to hear that his training was a daily hell or that it was the most delightful vacation of his life. The military trains the minds and bodies of our men and women in the anticipation of their engaging a fearsome enemy. Do we not have an enemy in the spiritual realm that requires comparable vigilance? And how much can a life of ease help us in completion of our campaign against the evil one and his forces? Very little, I am afraid.

“Pain is Temporal but Victory is Forever”

-Jeremy H.

There are usually two extremes suggested for solving the issue of spiritual sloth: complete surrender to reckless masochism or reckless hedonism, neither is what I suggest nor what the Bible proposes. Let us look back to John for an answer down the middle path.

“In this world you will have trouble” Jesus said in John 16:33. Taken as-is the quote may give a believer legitimate reason for fear or hopelessness, when in actuality it is simply a sour pickle in the middle of a sandwich. Thankfully, the scripture sits between: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace“ and “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The answer to stress is to see all trouble in the context of Christ. He is our source of strength in this world gym.

As long as Satan holds a grudge and people with free will walk the earth, potential struggles and troubles walk with them but that need not trouble us. Struggle may be an expectation of athletics but victory is a promise for those in Christ Jesus.

“Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”

• 1 Corinthians 9:25

In Him,

Jean-Marc