Christmas is hard.
I absolutely adore the time off work, getting together with friends
and family, the music, the food, the general festivities, and even the gifts, but none of those
change the fact that I am human. None of my problems magically disappear when
December 1st rolls around and we enter this season of hope, peace,
love, joy, and giving. Yet, I feel pressured to hide away all the stress,
anxiety, depression, and angst that seem to run even more rampant than usual
during this month, and paste on an over-the-top happy façade that says: “my life is perfect,
and I’m having you over right now over eggnog and cookies at my perfectly
decorated house full of love just to prove that to you—you should feel happy
for me, or shitty about yourself so that I feel superior to you in some way
because that validates my twisted psychological needs…”
No. Just, no.
I don’t often like getting preachy, because I feel like everything I
say gets intensely scrutinized, or that I’m believing something “wrong” or
misinterpreting something else, or that people just stop listening as soon as I
drop the J-bomb thinking I’m some sort of weird, fundamentalist religious wacko
without the balls to admit that I have my own human problems and doubts. But, I
do believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. He came to earth not to
trumpet himself above us, but to be holy, yet approachable—to show the love and
care of the father as a human in the flesh. Yes, there is the atonement for
sins part as well, but when we herald that above the gentle, meek, humble, ready-to-get-his-hands-dirty
human that Jesus was, we make him seem more distant from ourselves as humans,
and less accessible.
If our lives were as perfect as we like to make them seem at this
time of year, what need would we have for Jesus? If I had no mental health
issues, a perfect family, and an infinite amount of money, and if I somehow
magically felt adequate amounts of joy, peace, and love all the time, I
guarantee that I never would have ever had any questions about Jesus, and
sought answers. Christmas as a Hallmark, consumerist holiday has absolutely
poisoned us. “Here, buy all of these material things on credit that you can’t
afford so that you’ll be stuff rich and cash poor, but at least able to show
your neighbours that you don’t have money to pay for stuff, so your life must
be better than theirs, even though you’re both living paycheque to paycheque.”
No.
How about: “I’m human. I’m broken. I struggle with x, y, and z. I
NEED a God who loves me enough to come down to my level and sit with me, cry
with me, hurt with me, laugh with me, walk with me, and stay with me.”
Instead of trying to hide our brokenness under mountains of red and
green, silver and gold, delicious food, and gifts, how about we get into
community with one another as humans, be vulnerable about that brokenness with one another, lift up one
voice to God, and celebrate that he cares and knows our struggles because he gave us his son to come live among
us humbly, in full humanness.
Just a thought.
