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

Links In The Chains by Jean-Marc Saint Laurent

Hello dear friends,

I am happy to say that the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated —I just live in Florida, simply meaning that I have traded outrageous train fees for outrageous gas fees and crazy neighbors for crazy relatives.

But living with family has its benefits, namely the chance of finding someone else's food to eat and picking up their stories while I have the chance.

"Your mother was about two months pregnant with you, " my father began, cleaning our Sunday chicken with grocer's lime, one Saturday night before.

It was the Autumn of 1985, my mother, growing rounder by the month took respite on the second floor of our Brooklyn home. Quite randomly, a visiting Nigerian pastor, my father met in a home prayer service came ringing the doorbell asking that they both see her right away.

He told my father to place his hand on her belly and pray. "You will have a son and he will be a servant of God" said the pastor and laid his hand on my father's in agreement as they both prayed for my destiny.

Months later when I was presented to the church, a newborn. I am told of the elderly pastor that held me and prophesied much glory over my life, only to die three days later.


No one recollects what denominations they were with. They were simply men of God.

Contrast those glorified predictions with this August, as I sat, much older in an old chair at my old church, with the eyes of an inquisitive old man watching me carefully.

Blood in the Circle

"Look, he's bleeding!"

They mused as I stared at the small puddle now lying on the floor, looking as though it were splattered paint – yet it was a part me that been taken, and I vowed that it would never happen again.


It was 4th period and through our coach's intervention, our "class" contained every JV and Varsity football player in the high school usually for the purposes of weightlifting and running plays, but today we would learn a life lesson.


Led to the mens' wrestling room, we were ordered to form a circle of bodies, shoulder-to-shoulder as coach explained the premise of the day's activity:


"It's time to separate the Big Dogs from the puppies" he exhorted,


It was quite simple to grasp: two men in a circle were to do violence to one another at his signal.


"And no biting or punching", he added shortly before selecting combatants.


I was called into the circle with a good friend of mine – we were to battle. Poised to attack and awaiting the whistle, I made the mistake of having considered acting upon the one word farthest from my opponent's mind: mercy, and I would pay dearly for it.


Whistle blown, he immediately tackled me headfirst, dropping me on my spine.


(Now, I will not go into details of the subsequent violence: 1) it is not completely necessary for my point and 2) hazy recollection has shown me that I had apparently chosen to forget a large part of this. However, what I can speak on is how it ended.)


I had given him the upper hand – and he choked me with it. His arms were a vice around my neck and being that he was on my back, there was little option in the way of a counter. I would bleed and
spit up Deuteronomian life long before the whistle blew again.


That day, my friend taught me the most important of the world's lessons I had yet to internalize: "kill or be killed". The person I am is the product of moments like that.


When those in our circle: family, friends and brothers and sisters in Christ draw blood with their words and actions, it is hard to respond correctly or know how to respond at all.


"Dying men tell no lies"
Turn to the beginning of 1 Kings and you will find King David, at the end of his reign, the same David that showed God's mercy to a demon-possessed Saul and united Israel under his leadership.


He has become so advanced in years, he even turns down sex with a young beautiful woman; there are more pressing matters on his mind.


In Chapter 2, David instructs his son Solomon on two individuals he had apparently pardoned earlier during his reign: Shimei son of Gera for cursing and throwing stones and dirt at him and Joab son of Zeruiah, for unnecessary bloodshed.


Now originally, he had done what the best of us have tried to: give up their trespasses to God(2Sam 3:38-39; 2Sam 16:11-12)


But in 1 Kings 2, David tells his son to "act like a man" and have both executed. His advice leaves no room for misinterpretation:


"Bring his gray head down to the grave in blood."
-1Kings2:9


David may have had no lust for women on his deathbed, but he had bloodlust. These men had never been forgiven, they just unknowingly awaited judgment.


Is that not how it works in many of our lives: Judgment is not forgotten, just postponed? And meanwhile, we have resentment to occupy our time.




Resentment is the leather-bound book in which we, newly appointed judges, jot down the sins others commit against us.

Are you grinding your teeth into the smile you beam in the face of repeat offenses and hurtful speech ?
-Your resentment is building


Are you hating the lack of freedom you have around friends and family as you avoid the offender like a JW at your door on a Saturday morning?
-Classify this sin under "A" for "Annoyance"


Are they an infraction away from receiving "a piece of your mind"?
Better yet, "a piece of your peace?"
-Then you are ready to pen Volume II


If resentment feels justified and natural to you, it is because – it is, you have dealt with it all your life, though you probably know it better by it's other name: unforgiveness. And our unforgiveness screams for retribution and revenge.


But in our judges chambers, on the bottom row of the bookshelf of all that we know, underneath our latest edition of 'The Record of Wrongs', sits a dusty book called the 'Truth of Life' and it reads: In human relationships, true victims rarely exist, and even if they did at one point, they hardly ever stay that way for long.


Case in Point:
Shimei threw rocks at David for the very reason David had Joab killed, for being a man of bloodshed. And Joab felt retribution was deserved, after the king had allowed his brother's murderer to visit the palace like a common guest.


Were they justified?Yes.
Was he justified? Yes.
Though, it does not really matter.


Imagine a well-dressed and over-ambitious salesperson that talks your head off once you open your front door to them, he does not get the hint that you are uninterested in purchasing puppy pocket protectors today and refuses to take "no" for an answer...so you clobber him over the head with a baseball bat and consequently feel much better – you may be justified in your eyes and even in those of a jury of your peers, but in front of God Almighty – you stand guilty. 'Right' does not exist in the absence of God's standard.

Justification does not equal Justice.

If I left the story of my high school hurt as it is, you might get the idea I spent my years until graduation as a quarry of some sort – not exactly. To a certain degree I became angry and merciless, and took pride in whenever I could put these on display. But as mold spreads through a house, so was I not given the choice of which parts of my life it would infect.

Forgiveness and mercy are foreign languages we must learn, and virtues we must make the consistent choice to demonstrate because hate and unforgiveness are our native tongue and as natural to us a breathing. David knew this all too well.


After sinning himself, he made the following confession:


"Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me."
-Psalm 51:5


There is a part of me, the true me, that is sick with sin and loves my unforgiveness. When I ask it for kind words, all it suggests are curses, when I probe it for peaceful resolutions, it suggests I sharpen my sword.


So what hope is there for us? Thank God there is more to Psalm 51:


Verses 6-7:
"Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow."
Hyssop is a flower that was used in the Old Testament for purifying infected dwellings, but it was of no use – until mixed with blood.


"He shall purify the house with... blood, the fresh water, the live bird, the cedar wood, the hyssop and the scarlet yarn...and it will be clean."
-Leviticus 14:52-53
What I regularly pray and know in my heart, is that if my pains serve any real purpose in this life, it is for God's use in the purification of my sinful nature.


Jesus Christ, your high priest that surely understands the temptation of unforgiveness and revenge, is aware of your loss. He will renew you with the use of His hyssop, but only with HIS blood.


"Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
-Psalm 51:12-13


This is how Christ uses the "foolish" things of this world to confound the "wise":


He uses the "dead" things in it to give us "life"


He uses the "wounded" to "heal" others, and even "teach transgressors"


Any good response to evil requires wisdom outside of nature its self and it is His to give. By His Spirit he will give you words to speak, actions to live and prayers to pray in ANY and ALL situations, so that though others may want to, they will find no fault in you.


Therefore friends, look above and see that He began teaching us His lessons long before we learned any others and by His Grace, He will be faithful to complete them.


In Him,

Jean-Marc