A sacred Christmas

As I sit down to write this, Halloween has only just passed, and already I’m feeling the beginnings of Christmas shopping anxiety. I’m not a big shopper of things for myself, but I do like to try to find just the right gifts for loved ones.

Like most everyone else, we keep our holiday spending on a budget, and, as everyone

knows, the temptation to blow that budget is perhaps the strongest at Christmas time. It’s the time of year where every commercial, advertisement, catalog, website and store window is aimed at getting us all to spend just a wee bit more than we planned in order to make someone’s Christmas perfect.

I find myself feeling a little bit jealous of some friends of ours who are involved in mission work in Africa. They live in a remote area where there are no traffic lights, no phone lines and no electricity on the weekends — not to mention no shopping malls and no holiday marketing campaigns. I’m not jealous of the fact that they have to use headlamps to see on the weekends, but of how the creativity they must use probably makes their gifts that much sweeter.

The pressure to buy the right gifts has always been in place, but now as the parent of a 3 year old (who is old enough now to know you get presents on Christmas), there’s the added pressure of getting the right gifts for her. Knowing her, she’d be content opening a present or two and then playing in all the wrapping paper and boxes, but I’m sitting here looking at the list I’ve started for her Christmas gifts and thinking, “I need to get her more!” I bet the folks in Uganda where our friends live aren’t stressing over the need to buy more gifts.

Without the holiday shopping frenzy that Christmas in America has become, maybe they’re able to focus more solidly on what Christmas really means. Without Jesus, Christmas is all about shopping, fighting crowds at the mall, wrapping presents and peppermint lattes. Those aren’t bad things, but when we allow Jesus to enter the picture, the season becomes sacred.

Every year, I say, “This year, I’m going to focus on what the Christmas season is really about.” And it seems every year I get to January and realize I totally missed the sacredness of it. I want to remember the quietness of the night in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. The strength of the mother who birthed her holy child in a stable. The message God wanted to send to the world in the form of a child. I want the peace and stillness of that night and what Jesus means to a starving world to permeate my attitude as I take my place in the shopping crowds and stay up late wrapping and baking. I want Him to remind me daily that it’s not about the things I buy and do around the holidays that matter; it’s Him and what He did for me.

Lauren can be reached at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com.