All I Want for Christmas

 

With the temperatures warming up just a bit this week I confess to a bit of snow-anxiety.  By that I mean I am hoping for a white Christmas, and it would be a shame if all the snow that's already fallen in November and December suddenly left us just when we need it the most.

Not everyone feels this way, I know.  Ken looked out the window just now and joked, "It's above zero.  Why is there still snow?"  He does more shoveling that me, and, come to think of it, does more of the driving in it too, so his sentiments are understandable.  There are lots of 'good' reasons to prefer clear, dry pavement, even at the expense of seasonal ambiance.

No matter.  We're not in control of it at all, and anyway, the forecast for the weekend seems wintery enough.  

This snow thing, plus hearing a lovely, live rendition of Amy Grant's "Grown-Up Christmas List" at an event on Sunday afternoon [check out local artist Anat Hector] has reflecting today on that important practice of 'distilling.'  Google it, and you'll get a varied list of articles, not just about a chemical process, but a mental one.  Either way, it's all about getting right down to the essence of things.  One phrase that comes up is 'elegant simplicity.'  I like that.

So what do I want for Christmas?  Like, really?

I need to pause here, and resist any temptation to wax tritely.  Or make it seem like the cherished traditions of the holidays are merely superficial compared to...(insert profound doctrinal slam down here). I actually think our traditions, preferences, and practices, and whatever else makes Christmas meaningful for us are more deeply woven into our psyches and spirits than we realize, making it harder to sort out the 'true' from the 'counterfeit' or however else we might divide things.

Still, I think it's a good exercise.  And, if I'm being honest, it's during the difficult Christmases that we seem best able to distill things down to their elegant simplicity.  When it's a 'first' Christmas in a sad way.  When life is so distracting you hardly know it's Christmas.  When Christmas is suddenly quieter, smaller, strange.  When things are 'so very different' from last year, that you're starting from scratch to make your own new traditions and ways to celebrate.  

Maybe that's why we always want to come back to the Manger.  Elegant simplicity.  Down to the essence of things.

I am grateful this year for some simpler ways of celebrating in our new little house.  I am grateful for the plans to be together, both with our faith-family and our own little clan.  I am grateful, in that counterintuitive way, for the bitter-sweet missing of another family far away.  I am grateful for God's goodness in the year just past, and for anticipation of adventures in the year to come.  

And yes, it would be a happy thing for me (and a few not-so-random grandchildren I know) if we still had snow for Christmas.  And, like I said, it's looking that way, so...  (Wish I could send some to one little place in Thailand.)

Trusting you are finding your own distilled ways of being, this season.  Especially, and with gentleness, if this is one of those kinds of Christmases for you.