The weather here has been unseasonably warm for December. It isn't that we normally expect a white Christmas in South Carolina, but my boys aren't usually wearing shorts after Thanksgiving. It hasn't felt like Christmas outside.
And yet this is when the cashiers at the grocery store start asking, "Are you ready for Christmas?" They are asking about whether we have the menu planned and the presents bought, but I hear it on a deeper level.
I've never felt ready for Christmas.
My husband calls the day after Christmas the most anticlimactic day of the year. You spend so much time anticipating December 25, and how could a regular old day follow such a day of excitement? Such is the curse placed on December 26. For almost all of the past several Christmas seasons, I have felt like I didn't fully capture Christmas that year. Maybe I had waited too long to buy presents and so the week before Christmas was hectic. Or maybe I had missed church due to sickness and didn't get to sing many of my favorite Advent hymns. Whatever the reason, it always felt like something was missing.
And so every year, once Thanksgiving ends, I look ahead and wonder if this year will be different. Will I really feel deeply what Advent, the waiting time, is all about?
The last five months have been painful and difficult for our family, and so I just assumed that when December started, it would be like every other year. Biding my time until Christmas came, and then we would just start the whole year over again. In fact, I thought this might be the most difficult Christmas we have ever had, as we are facing many transitions in the new year and aren't quite sure how to approach them.
To my surprise, I think this is the first year, maybe in my whole life, but at least in a long time, that I understand what it means to be in Advent, to remember those who were waiting for the Messiah, and now, thousands of years after his birth and death, to be looking ahead to his coming again.
When everything is cheery and bright and happy, it's hard to feel a desire for some kind of rescue, for something different. Things are fine just the way they are, thank you very much.
But when life is hard, when relationships have broken, when the future is uncertain, when you lose trust in those who are in authority over you... it's all you can do to say, "Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!"
I don't know that I have it in me to hope that every Christmas will be like this year. But I hope that I don't forget the heavy weight I have carried these past few weeks. Mary, Joseph, far from home and physically exhausted. Simon, Anna, wondering if they would die before they saw the Messiah. Zechariah, Elizabeth, realizing that the God they worshiped really could do the impossible. That is the God I want, and that is the Savior I need. That is Christmas.
This morning we woke to a cloudy, drizzly day, and a touch of chill in the air. The warm weather is gone, at least for today, which is what I had been hoping for, but I had hoped for cold, sunny weather, not dreary downpours. It still doesn't feel like Christmas outside, but here, in our warm house, with my husband and my two precious boys, my heart is waiting and expectant. I'm ready for Christmas.
