Cliche #3: Jesus is the Reason for the Season

* I originally wrote this on Christmas Eve a few years ago. It's always been one of my favorite posts from my xanga (yeah - kickin it old school), and this year it's been coming to mind a lot. Since it fits in with the theme, I thought I would share it again. I made some minor tweaks, as this is a cliche/lesson that I need reminded of every year.

Christmas is a funny thing. It's so easy to get wrapped up in all of it... to get caught up in the commercialism. It used to make me so mad when people would say that... because Christmas has always been more than commercialism for me. I guess I never realized until a few years ago, however, how much my Christmas is about traditionalism. My family has been doing Christmas the same way for as long as I can remember (with a few exceptions for ski trips and such), but seriously... we have had the same family members over every Christmas Eve to eat the same snacky foods and play the same card games. We always read the Christmas story and open our new Christmas ornaments and Nativity pieces. I think we may even sit in the same spots on the couch when we do this. Then... we go to bed... only to wake up to a traditional Christmas morning. I wake up and hear everyone moving around in the kitchen and the living room, but I wait until my cousin Chris runs into my room and hurls himself on top of me. He lays there just long enough to make me not able to breathe, then he pulls me out of bed, makes fun of my hair (even my hair is tradional... I have the same bed head style every year)and we go out into the living room. We open presents, then eat homemade doughnuts and breakfast casserole. Then we play more of the same games before we make the same Christmas dinner.

Now... don't get me wrong... I love all of this tradition. I love my family and the stuff that we do together. I even love that it is all totally predictable. The problem is, though, that sometimes things just don't work out. Cousins grow up and get married, then visit the in-laws for Christmas. Moms get anuerysms and don't have the energy for everything they usually do. A few years ago was the first year when things just didn't work out. There was no possibility to continue the traditions, because the people that we have the traditions with weren't there. We tried to make the same Christmas cookies and play the same Christmas games, but... it just felt... empty. And... all of a sudden... Christmas started feeling empty too. This is when I realized that maybe my traditionalism is a problem. Maybe Christmas isn't about doing the same things, with the same people year after year after year. Maybe its about finding new ways to celebrate something much more miraculous.

I don't want to be one of those people that espouses the cliche line "Jesus is the reason for the season" all the time, but... here it seem appropriate. How quickly I forget that my Savior is the reason for this holiday, not my family, food, presents, or traditions. When my little sister was reading the Christmas story that Christmas, it just kind of hit me... Jesus is so amazing. He came as a baby. Not a King, moving in and reclaiming the world as you would expect Him too... no... just as a humble child. His parents were probably poor, definitely not popular (I mean... they had a kid out of wedlock in Bible times... come on). He started out just as small and helpless as me. How incredible is that. His sacrifice started with His birth, not with His death. His grace began at Christmas, not at Easter. That semester God had been teaching me that Christ was humiliated before He was exalted... and that Christmas I got it. His life was not the life of a great man. He didn't come in on a golden horse and impress anyone. Instead, He came as a little baby. He was a child, and in those times children were lower even than servants. He grew into a man, and still... He lived a life of humble service. What an incredible gift Jesus is. What an incredible sacrifice He made... and it all started on Christmas day. He could have showed up as anything, but He chose to be wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. He chose to live a full life of sacrifice... for me. 

This Christmas may be very different from our usual, traditional Christmas, but... it definitely isn't empty. Of course, it helps no small amount that my mom is home, doing wonderfully, and planning on baking with me all day tomorrow. Merry Christmas almost doesn't seem to cover it.

"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn^[d] of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,the oath he swore to our father Abraham:to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days." Luke 1:68-75