Toasting Christmas

Here's to wassail and figgy puddings!

It's Christmas morning and I woke up long before the sunrise. This is not unusual on December 25, although in recent years the empty nest has removed the reason to be up so early. Like most children, when I was young, I couldn't wait for this morning so I could tear into the presents waiting under the tree. After I married and my own children came along, I was as excited as they were to see the gifts distributed. I came to understand the almost embarrassed look on my Dad's face in all those home movies when he was given a gift to open. My real joy was in watching others get their presents.

 

That partially explains why during what I now call the fiscal dark ages I used credit with abandon to buy Christmas gifts for my family. Every year in January I swore I would never again charge "Christmas" and pay for eleven months after. Every year in December I broke my word and rang up the charges again. I don't mean to imply that all my borrowing was for the benefit of others; I spent plenty of money on myself in the form of cars, motorcycles, boats, and other toys. But somehow, I was able to excuse my annual December excess by calling it generosity.

Now that exigency has forcefully removed the temptation of a plastic Christmas celebration, I still overspend; at least it doesn't haunt me throughout the next year in monthly billing statements. True, the January light bill may get paid a little late, and there will be no emergency savings for some time, but I feel much better knowing it was a cash Christmas. I don't have great wealth to distribute, but I enjoy sharing what I can at this season.

But I wonder if I don't still have a serious problem with the focus of my excitement. I wonder if I haven't bought into the great commercial hype we have succumbed to in this society. Saying Christmas is about giving sounds noble, even spiritual, but that does not really reflect the reason for the season. It may be unselfish to give to others, but if I give because it makes me feel good, I have admitted a grain of selfishness in my motivation. Worse, if I overspend so that I can give "generously," pride may have slipped into the package as well.

As the sun lights the Christmas morning sky, I am forced to ask what Christmas really means to me. I am sitting in front of a beautifully decorated (fake) evergreen with a substantial pile of gaily wrapped presents lying underneath it. The yule log blazes with digital perfection on my flat screen while Christmas music pumps out of my surround sound system. No less than fourteen Santas sit in various poses around the living area, and scores more artifacts of the holiday grace every flat surface available.

Sadly, it sounds trite to say what I am about to say: Jesus is the reason for the season. I know this somewhere deep inside, but my outward expression (and my wife's decorating obsession) belie the truth of it. Granted, there is one manger scene among the red and green collection of holiday images, but the preponderance of everything else the season has become outweighs any spiritual significance of the little creche. The preparations and resulting activities also shout louder than the message of the manger.

It will not be popular to say so, but the reason we celebrate the coming of Jesus is because of what he was destined to do for us. Thanks to our forefather, Adam, we are all born separated from our Creator by a distance that no man can cross. But years after the manger, a cross did span the distance between God and his fallen creatures, and the sweet little baby in the straw became the suffering man on that cross. The sin that caused the separation from God and dissolution of all peace on earth demanded a payment. That is what the coming of a Savior is all about.

Now if I can somehow relate the giving of those pretty presents under my Christmas tree with the gift God gave on Calvary's tree, I may have rediscovered the reason for the season. I don't want to be a humbug. I don't see anything wrong with getting families together to exchange gifts and share a special meal, but I can no longer equate what we have made Christmas into with what happened in Judea back when the time had fully come and God sent forth his son as a love gift so that whoever believes on him will not perish but have eternal life. If you must raise your eggnog, toast that.