A quiet Christmas, anyone?

I love Christmas. I probably love it a little more than my own birthday. Well, I do believe that Christmas marks the birth of the Christ child and that it is how salvation has come into the world. It is amazing though how the commercial aspect of Christmas is also so much fun. The decorations and Christmas music all over the place as well as the special food stuff that comes in from all over – not always available all year round, add to the excitement. It’s also exciting thinking about presents. What to buy friends and family you hold dear, on what is often a limited budget! It’s fun planning parties and putting your guest list together. Getting your guests to participate in and enjoy the celebrations takes time and effort. Then there’s the menu. Sometimes we cater and get the professionals to relieve us of having to produce marvels from the kitchen. Sometimes we try to produce morsels that tantalise from our very kitchens. Oh the heights of busyness we reach. 

This year, it has been especially hard planning a get together because so many of the special people in my life are busy on the date that I chose. We’ve been talking about how we’ve run out of dates. It rings true when you and your friends start realising that your dos are clashing with each other! The mayhem. 

In the midst of all this, there have been changes to my own life. The diagnosis for rheumatoid arthritis is well confirmed and I have no more cause for denial. The last few months have been filled with the hunt for suitable treatment methods and it’s a godsend that I’ve just found trainers who can work with me long term on a physiotherapy regime that hopefully keeps me off medicines. It’s a prayer answered for sure and I’m grateful for the chance to fight without medicine. It’s not been easy grappling with the fact that I can’t do as much as I used to. Entertaining is now hard work. Not good news for the extrovert in me. 

Our home dynamic is also different this year. That’s been another reason why it’s harder to entertain. It’s an interesting learning curve for me, for sure and maybe somewhere further down the line, I’ll be able to say what the lessons have been. However, it makes it more difficult to organise dos as there are more factors to consider. Add this to the struggle to find a date where all my friends can come and the desire to be totally pain free to do exactly what I want to do for them when they come to my home, makes everything feel a little flat. Add in the fact that I’ve just received news of a good friend’s leaving. All very overwhelming. 

Still I don’t think I’m yet capable of a quiet Christmas. I’ve got far too much life in my veins and there’s so much I like doing as part of the festivities. It’s been amazing to just see how there’s momentum to every plan. Friends are eager to make things work alongside you. They help with carrying the shopping when I can’t carry as much because of sore wrists; they give me ideas on how to run some plans for the evening I’ve planned; they talk to me about baking and how much food we really need; they want to bring stuff to the get together and they also bring their talents and enthusiasm with them to just make everything flow. 

All this doesn’t reflect the reason why I celebrate Christmas though. The festivities are probably more of the hold of the commercial Christmas on me: the expectation of what Christmas should look like. It’s the stress that makes me want to wrap presents better and bake more. This year, I’m realising that this will eventually run out. A lot has changed from when my mum passed away. I don’t have the same desire to celebrate because it reminds me of my last Christmas with her. With time, I have recovered and gone on to celebrate in ways that suited the change her passing marked in me. Now with the RA and the change in our home, there are differences that are marking me. These are making the buzz at Christmas feel a little less necessary. 

One of my favourite things in the world was when my mum was alive. We’d sit up really late over the Xmas period and talk about the birth of the Christ child. We’d talk about it in many ways: the way the whole thing felt almost unreal but yet we knew there was Jesus. We talked about why the magical birth led to His gory, painful and terribly shameful death on the cross – for us. We’d often stop at that because the realisation of who we are makes knowing why He died so difficult to understand. We’d also talk about His glorious resurrection and how magnificent the celebration in Heaven would have been to have their Creator back on His throne. While mum isn’t here, I often sit alone downstairs in the quiet of our living room and think on these truths. Last night as I sat thinking of these in the quiet moments of the night, I realised that it was the quiet of a Christmas night in December, that the greatest joy came down to us. It is really Him that the greatest celebrations and festivities should be for. It doesn’t matter to Him if I cannot bake and cook as much or throw as many parties. It doesn’t matter to Him if I can’t put up all the decorations this time round. All the matters to Him is the big buzz in my heart when I think of Him during the quiet of Christmas and all year round. This buzz can never go out because He is the keeper of my heart and He lights its flame. This buzz isn’t just limited to this season- something that the commercial buzz cannot compete with. And this buzz is free. Oh Lord – how you often show me truths that baffle me completely! 

So if you’re like me and are longing for the days of old when you could do more just to keep up the Christmas beat, remember the Christ child and let Your heart be filled with the music of gladness of His birth. None of this is ever really reflected in the festivities of the season, if we’re truly honest. Yet they come alive in the quiet of Christmas. 

Merry Christmas everyone! May the Christ fill your hearts with true Christmas cheer!