Tis the Season

I think that people think I'm nuts. People are wondering what is wrong with me. The culture may call me a Scrooge.  Others may think I've lost my Christmas spirit.

Advent wreath and St. Lucy bread

I don't have lights on my house to be seen from space. I haven't done any Christmas baking yet (although I've celebrated the feast days of St. Barbara, St. Lucy, St. Nicholas, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Immaculate Conception). I haven't fallen over backwards to shop on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Super Saturday. I haven't played Christmas music 24/7 for the last 4+ weeks. I have only started watching Christmas movies just days before Christmas.

Yep, to everyone else, it may look like I've lost my Christmas spirit.

But au contraire! My Christmas spirit has been growing and growing and this year, I feel fuller than ever!

Jesse Tree

For starters, it's not even Christmas yet (it's currently December 22)! I have been celebrating Advent, meaning, "coming." Yes, Christmas--Jesus--is coming, not, here. We have faithfully lit our Advent candles at dinner every night for the last four weeks while singing, "O Come O Come Emmanuel"--come, Lord Jesus, come! The ornaments are going up on our Jesse Tree and our Nativity scenes are missing one Key Player.

No, I haven't "done" Christmas yet because Advent is the season to prepare. We clean our homes and adorn them with decorations for the season. But a better preparation has been cleaning my soul and making myself a more beautiful dwelling place for the Lord. I haven't "done" Christmas yet because the Baby, the reason for the season, isn't here yet. We don't celebrate our own birthdays a month in advance and then hardly acknowledge the actual day. Why do it to Jesus?

"Doing" Christmas before Christmas Day, when our focus is not on Jesus, is only a distraction. We keep so busy with the hustle and bustle of gifts, wrapping paper, food, cooking, baking, ugly sweaters, decorating, parties, movies, music, and trying to cram it all in a few weeks--how dizzying! With such "noise" and busy-ness, our minds are too busy. The hours in our days are too full. Our focus is on all the wrong stuff. I can't think of a more effective way to forget about Jesus, ironically, in the season when we are supposed to celebrate Him. Too busy to pray. Too much to do, can't sit in quiet prayer with the Lord. Too many places to go, can't make it to Confession or even Mass.

When we're so caught up in "celebrating" Christmas before Christmas Day, we're left with an empty feeling. I know this is WAY too common in homes across America: it's the afternoon of Christmas Day, and suddenly, Christmas is "over." The presents have been opened, which marks the end of the day and season. With all the build-up of the last few weeks, Christmas Day is always anticlimactic. This makes no sense! Christmas isn't OVER on the 25th, it has only just begun! Christmas, the birth of our Lord, the humbling of God to become man--a little Baby--, the Eternal Word entering our fallen world in order to save us, this great event of human history is such a great event that we celebrate Christmas "Day" for eight days! That climax of the season should be celebrated for eight days of the Octave of Christmas! And all this within the Christmas Season, which goes all the way through the middle of January to the Baptism of the Lord!

Our culture "loves" Christmas to death to the point that, just when the holiday gets started, everyone else is over it. Done. And THAT is what happens when Christmas isn't properly prepared for during the season of Advent.

So yeah, people may think I'm nuts. People may think I've lost my Christmas spirit. But this year I'm properly ordering the celebrations. I'm preparing my soul more than all that other "stuff." I still think that the "stuff" is important, but only when properly ordered. And in "holding off" on all that "stuff" during Advent and waiting until Christmas, I'm actually able to enjoy and appreciate it even more.

Merry Christmas!