It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
It's december, and I'm in a Christmas
mood
This morning at work, while I was walking to my
car from my desk, I heard someone faintly listening to Christmas music, and I
started thinking about Christmas and realized its now officially December
(I originally wrote this Dec.
1st) and I just began to get excited. Advent
is my favorite time of year. I love thinking about what presents I will get my
wife and my family and friends. I love the wonderful amount of family time
Christmas brings - Thanksgiving dinner kicks it off and then its family dinners
and Christmas Eve services and on and on. All of this adds up to make me just
giddily excited.
This year, I've resolved not to apologize for my excitement. Recently, Dr. Reynolds returned to the blogosphere with a great post right before Thanksgiving about being happy around holidays and the obligatory cynicism with which that is often met -
"It should be easy to be thankful this year, because of the blessings of this season of my life. However, I must admit that as a sarcastic person, a child of my era, it is hard for me just to be thankful without making myself nauseous. Nobody rolls their eyes if you complain or attack, but to say that I love my wife, children, and life is to invite ridicule. How did this happen?
Marketing did it, in part. We are so used to seeing people act happy who are not that we assume that anyone who acts happy isn’t. After all we know from deepest experience that getting that new Han Solo blaster for Christmas will not make us happy. We know that the right toothpaste will not make our love life soar. If we are the right age, we also know that having a great love life is good, but also is not the sort of thing that will produce human flourishing. So we react with cynicism when someone claims to be happy. What is he selling?
Americans are also intellectually tougher on things they want than on things they don’t want. We believe in knowledge, but feel post-modern guilt about it. We think being a republic is better than living under a tyranny, but feel multi-cultural angst about such a bold (!) assertion. We love holidays, but feel like that must be a product of consumerism forgetting that they had more holidays than we in the Middle Ages! Say you are sad and nobody will quibble, but say you are happy and everyone will wonder what you are hiding."
Sorry for the long quote, but I just couldn't snip any of that out I liked it all so much. That is exactly how I feel about Christmas - I am really excited and happy, but I feel if I let that on too much everyone will think I'm some sort of idiot who has been taken over by a capitalistic scheme conceived by the unholy conglomerate of toy makers, marketers and retail outlets. "It's so sad; he thinks he's happy, but he's just another pawn in the matrix." Either that or I fear that people will think I'm just putting on a good face and faking happiness, or that I'm trying to rub it in less fortunate people's faces - what about those people who don't have a good church or happy family life? As Melinda from STR pointed out, we don't throw out ideals because they aren't fully obtained, and the way of helping those who are less fortunate is not to simply pretend we're as bad off as them. Rather it is to offer ourselves and our happiness to them - there's a pew with a seat for you at Reformation Lutheran Church if you don't have anywhere to go on Christmas, and for anyone I know reading this that doesn't have a place to eat on Christmas, my family would jump at the chance to give you a seat at our table and fill you up with great food.
I think part of the temptation to play down our happiness is the tendency for nuance to appear wise. This is not a bad thing - moderation is one of the key virtues and as Joe Carter points out, often people with broad brush opinions are displaying that they lack the kind of reasoning skills that would bring them to the conclusion they've reached. But there is a bad aspect as well. We are tempted to give the illusion of nuance in everything, lest we appear immoderate. We can't be too happy, because that would seem like we don't care about those who aren't happy this Christmas, or that we are trying to cover up for some other area of unhappiness.
As I said, this year I'm resolved to ignore this temptation. It's advent and I'm exceedingly happy and excited about Christmas. I have a gorgeous wife who has always been a wonderful encouragement to me, and who is growing in her faith. I have a healthy little girl who will soon be born - an answer to prayer that I can't wait o see and hold. I have an excellent family, who will feed me and love me more than I can express. I have an orthodox, historical, Lutheran church where the Gospel is preached and I am often reminded that my sins are forgiven. Which of course leads to the true gift of Christmas, I have Christ and all his promises - my sins are no more, I am loved and cherished by God, any enmity that was once between us has been destroyed by His grace, and I have the hope of Heaven where He will dry every tear from our eyes and show us that all we are thankful for here is but a taste of the goodness He has in store for us for all eternity.
Indeed, there are so many wonderful things about Christmas, so much to be excited about. I hope all of you have a wonderful and merry Christmas, and I hope this year you join me in refusing to hide it.
This year, I've resolved not to apologize for my excitement. Recently, Dr. Reynolds returned to the blogosphere with a great post right before Thanksgiving about being happy around holidays and the obligatory cynicism with which that is often met -
"It should be easy to be thankful this year, because of the blessings of this season of my life. However, I must admit that as a sarcastic person, a child of my era, it is hard for me just to be thankful without making myself nauseous. Nobody rolls their eyes if you complain or attack, but to say that I love my wife, children, and life is to invite ridicule. How did this happen?
Marketing did it, in part. We are so used to seeing people act happy who are not that we assume that anyone who acts happy isn’t. After all we know from deepest experience that getting that new Han Solo blaster for Christmas will not make us happy. We know that the right toothpaste will not make our love life soar. If we are the right age, we also know that having a great love life is good, but also is not the sort of thing that will produce human flourishing. So we react with cynicism when someone claims to be happy. What is he selling?
Americans are also intellectually tougher on things they want than on things they don’t want. We believe in knowledge, but feel post-modern guilt about it. We think being a republic is better than living under a tyranny, but feel multi-cultural angst about such a bold (!) assertion. We love holidays, but feel like that must be a product of consumerism forgetting that they had more holidays than we in the Middle Ages! Say you are sad and nobody will quibble, but say you are happy and everyone will wonder what you are hiding."
Sorry for the long quote, but I just couldn't snip any of that out I liked it all so much. That is exactly how I feel about Christmas - I am really excited and happy, but I feel if I let that on too much everyone will think I'm some sort of idiot who has been taken over by a capitalistic scheme conceived by the unholy conglomerate of toy makers, marketers and retail outlets. "It's so sad; he thinks he's happy, but he's just another pawn in the matrix." Either that or I fear that people will think I'm just putting on a good face and faking happiness, or that I'm trying to rub it in less fortunate people's faces - what about those people who don't have a good church or happy family life? As Melinda from STR pointed out, we don't throw out ideals because they aren't fully obtained, and the way of helping those who are less fortunate is not to simply pretend we're as bad off as them. Rather it is to offer ourselves and our happiness to them - there's a pew with a seat for you at Reformation Lutheran Church if you don't have anywhere to go on Christmas, and for anyone I know reading this that doesn't have a place to eat on Christmas, my family would jump at the chance to give you a seat at our table and fill you up with great food.
I think part of the temptation to play down our happiness is the tendency for nuance to appear wise. This is not a bad thing - moderation is one of the key virtues and as Joe Carter points out, often people with broad brush opinions are displaying that they lack the kind of reasoning skills that would bring them to the conclusion they've reached. But there is a bad aspect as well. We are tempted to give the illusion of nuance in everything, lest we appear immoderate. We can't be too happy, because that would seem like we don't care about those who aren't happy this Christmas, or that we are trying to cover up for some other area of unhappiness.
As I said, this year I'm resolved to ignore this temptation. It's advent and I'm exceedingly happy and excited about Christmas. I have a gorgeous wife who has always been a wonderful encouragement to me, and who is growing in her faith. I have a healthy little girl who will soon be born - an answer to prayer that I can't wait o see and hold. I have an excellent family, who will feed me and love me more than I can express. I have an orthodox, historical, Lutheran church where the Gospel is preached and I am often reminded that my sins are forgiven. Which of course leads to the true gift of Christmas, I have Christ and all his promises - my sins are no more, I am loved and cherished by God, any enmity that was once between us has been destroyed by His grace, and I have the hope of Heaven where He will dry every tear from our eyes and show us that all we are thankful for here is but a taste of the goodness He has in store for us for all eternity.
Indeed, there are so many wonderful things about Christmas, so much to be excited about. I hope all of you have a wonderful and merry Christmas, and I hope this year you join me in refusing to hide it.
Posted: Thu - December 8, 2005 at 08:33 AM | | | | | | |
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Published On: Dec 08, 2005 09:03 AM
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