Let It Be

 This time of year a picture of “happily married with two kids and a golden-doodle all in matching pajamas by a roaring fireplace” runs around in our heads and we measure how badly we miss that ideal, making ourselves miserable for all the shortfalls. “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year” is the biggest lie we tell ourselves in Western culture. Yes, the music is heavenly and the lights are glorious but beyond that, there is life as usual. Actually, life as usual is amped up and stress to fit the mold is heightened. We feel we must keep everyone happy-clappy and when we fall short, and we do, we have to deal with unmet expectations.

So what if we put an end to the need to measure up to that impossible picture of perfection? What if we take a step back and not. Not make all those expected treats and not wring our hands over missed loved ones and not set the bar at an unattainable level? What would that look like? It may look like no Christmas cards, empty chairs, fewer stocking stuffers, or fewer lights on the house. 

Or maybe it would look like missing your mom and being alone away from family and friends with a new spouse in a dirty lonely dark cave used for animals while preparing a place for a newborn baby from a slobber covered feed trough and the smell of manure all around. There is no clean water, no comforts of home and no one believes your story of an angel and virginity. The birth is painful and the baby is born. What next? The birth of the King is celebrated not by authorities and leading rabbis, but by handicapped smelly, thieving sheep-herders who claim to have been heralded by a host of angels. Is this what the God of the universe intended?

So maybe it is time to let the cliche picture in our heads go. Maybe the best gift we could give ourselves this Christmas is to not expect anything out of the ordinary but to let it be as Mary did so long ago. 

Velvet Jesus

 

Gift giving season is upon us and everyone approaches it a little differently. In our primarily German immigrant family, most of us are very pragmatic and want a list to check off. However, my brother who was nine years my senior, was very different in his approach to gift giving. With my brother, it was all about the joy he received by giving and the sky was the limit when it came to spending. He could deal with the bills in January(or not). 

He delighted so much in selecting just the right gift that we were all drawn in by curiosity as to what he got us. Sometimes he got creative with the wrapping too. When I was very young,(and we are talking 1960’s), he secretly used his paper route money to buy our family an electric toothbrush set for Christmas. He wrapped the main body in a large package with all our names on it. Then he labeled separately wrapped gifts with our name containing each colored toothbrush head. He kept bragging about his secret present so I snuck a peak before Christmas to find half a toothbrush. Confused sigh. 

Another Christmas when he was older, he came home with a huge present for my mom. He stowed it away and carried on about how surprised she would be. Later, he showed it to me and my dad under a shroud of secrecy. It was a gigantic painting of Jesus done on black velvet. We appropriately carried on about how much she was going to love it, so much so that mom dreamed about that present on Christmas Eve. She claimed that she dreamed he got her a hideous painting of Jesus. Much to her delight and surprise on Christmas morning she found this one to be beautiful and told us about her dream.

I don’t remember what happened to Velvet Jesus but we had him hanging in our living room for quite a few years. My brother was not worried about the eventual disappearance of Jesus because he was excited about the next gift he was going to give. He was such a great gift giver! His excitement made me anticipate opening his gift more than the others every single Christmas. So thinking back, I see that his gifts were not all that great but his delivery was stellar. Maybe it isn’t about the perfect gift but the perfect effort and attitude.