Christmas Cheer

Christmas has been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember. It was always the holiday with the biggest family gatherings, the one when we got to have ham instead of turkey, the one with the best desserts, and none of that pumpkin pie nonsense. This year, however, was a little different.

My Christmas spirit arrived just in the nick of time (groan away, it was a terrible Christmas pun). As I walked into the choir room of my home church on Wednesday night, I was greeted by the faces of people I can't remember not knowing. I was welcomed with hugs and smiles, and enthusiastically encouraged to join the choir for the evening service. As we sat rehearsing the music for the service, I was reminded of the deep passion and faith with which these people use the gifts God has given them. As they lifted their voices in beautiful harmonies, I felt my heart rising heavenward as well.

As we stood in the choir loft and sang hymns and anthems appropriate to advent and Christmas, I began to imagine how the shepherds felt as they heard the heavenly host singing to announce the birth of Christ. As the readers pronounced the words of Scripture that I've heard so many times before, I had a new appreciation for the awe and wonder of the season.

You see, I was more alert this year, more prepared to savor the moments of worship, because I was consciously making a memory. This is probably the last Christmas that I will have at my home church, since next year I will hopefully be serving a church somewhere else. I'm going to miss simply worshiping on Christmas Eve, being able to sit with my family as I hear the words of the gospel proclaiming Christ's birth. While I'm excited to serve, I'm sad that this chapter in my life is probably closing.

Some of the changes are arriving already, in fact. Instead of just four of us at Christmas this year, we welcomed my new brother-in-law to our family Christmas. It was like putting on a pair of new jeans: you're excited about the newness, but the fit is strange, the style and color are slightly different, and it's difficult to say goodbye to your old favorite pair. There's grief in the loss of the old ways. But having a new person in the family (a wonderful person, in case you were wondering) also meant that we got to explain the traditions and retell the family stories. I was reminded of the Haggadah, the tradition of Passover in which the family re-tells the stories and re-explains the rituals of Passover for children and newcomers. As strange as it was, there was something beautiful about explaining the rituals of negotiating the use of the china, of telling the stories of Tina and the cream pitcher and my maternal grandmother's tradition of the red bag. In telling the stories again, I was reminded of why my family is so special to me, and of how much those experiences have shaped how I understand Christmas.