Christmas Day
***
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
Luke 2:14
***
***
Christmas Eve and Ordinary Joy
When I picture in my mind this turn from Advent to Christmas, it looks like a stream of water becoming larger and faster until it pours itself out into a big, beautiful sea.
And, I do think it is like that. But, it is also like sitting next to a friend at the Christmas Eve church service. It is getting up and making the traditional Christmas morning cinnamon rolls. It is heading to the kitchen to prepare the turkey or ham or (in our case) the Beef Bourguignon soup. It is cleaning up the mess of wrapping paper. It is a big sandwich made with leftover everything and eaten in front of the fire.
In other words, Christmas is both extraordinary (like frosty starlight and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”) and beautifully ordinary (meals cooked and shared, phone calls made and received).
We all know this. We have all lived this. We have seen Christmas come and go, again and again. But I mention it because it is so easy, with the waiting and the longing, to forget that what we have been waiting for is mostly already with us. Not entirely, no, but more and more every year Christ is with us and his kingdom is more fully realized.
Perhaps, what we have been waiting for is not more of Jesus, necessarily, but eyes that are open more widely to the fact that he is always and already with us – in so many seemingly ordinary ways.
And so I wish you an ordinary Christmas. A Christmas of friendship and special food and thoughtful gifts. A Christmas of candlelight and carols and maybe a hand to hold or, if not that, a very good book.
I wish you a Merry Christmas.
Advent (Day 23): His Imprisonment, Our Freedom
I may have saved the best for last.
I never speak in absolutes about favorite books or poems or writers, but I think Luci Shaw’s “Made Flesh” is my favorite poem for Advent.
Of course, I’ve mentioned Luci Shaw a few times before. Advent may be pouring itself out into the glory of the Christmas season, but Shaw’s poetry is an excellent literary companion through the whole year. Might I suggest beginning the new year with her poems close at hand?
This one is worth reading slowly.
And repeatedly.
\
Made Flesh
After
the white-hot beam of annunciation
fused heaven with dark earth,
his searing, sharply focused light
went out for a while,
eclipsed in amniotic gloom:
his cool immensity of splendor,
his universal grace,
small-folded in a warm, dim
female space –
the Word stern-sentenced to be
nine months’ dumb –
infinity walled in a womb,
until the next enormity –
the Mighty One, after submission
to a woman’s pains,
helpless on a barn’s bare floor,
first-tasting bitter earth.
Now
I in him surrender
to the crush and cry of birth.
Because eternity
was closeted in time,
he is my open door to forever.
From his imprisonment
my freedoms grow,
find wings. Part of his body,
I transcend this flesh.
From his sweet silence my mouth sings.
Out of his dark I glow.
My life, as his,
slips through death’s mesh,
time’s bars,
joins hands with heaven,
speaks with stars.
– Luci Shaw, from Accompanied by Angels
Advent (Day 22)
A prayer for this, the fourth Sunday of Advent:
In the dark of the year
I will light a candle …
for Christmas coming soon …
for Jesus born in Bethlehem …
for the angels’ message of peace and goodwill …
for the star that leads us all to Jesus …
May the light of my Christmas candle remind me of heaven’s light.
– from A Child’s First Book of Prayers, by Lois Rock and Alison Jay
***
***
Advent (Day 21): These Farmhouse Bookshelves
I finished the Christmas grocery shopping today.
That means I have nothing to do for days but read and read and read by the tree. Well, that and wrap presents. I do tend to put that chore off till the last possible minute. And, I suppose the children will still demand to be fed. Strange how they expect regular meals even while on holiday.
But, still, rest assured, there will be a great deal of reading in the days ahead. I hope that proves true for you as well.
Here are a few more favorites from our stack of Christmas stories.
(You can find all my book recommendations here along with a disclaimer about the affiliate links I use.)
***
***
Today, I’m recommending three picture books, but wait … these books aren’t really meant for small children. My second-grader and fourth-grader enjoy these, but I would share these books with anyone from an older child to an adult.
This first book would make an especially nice gift for a poetry or art-lover.
It is Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
With its intricately detailed illustrations of snowy landscapes, this is a book that demands we slow down. My children love to search out the forest animals hidden in each image, and Jeffers gives this familiar poem a lovely, new twist of an ending through her designs.
But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep
Christmas Day in the Morning
If you don’t know the story already, I won’t spoil the surprise. I’ll only say that this one inspired my daughter to shovel the driveway as a Christmas gift to her Dad.
Buck’s classic story always makes me tear up a little. Okay, I have trouble not breaking down whenever I read it out loud.
The best Christmas gift I ever had, and I’ll remember it, son, every year on Christmas morning, so long as I live.
Winter’s Gift
‘The star is the most important part of the tree,’ she would always say. ‘It’s a symbol of hope, and no matter how bad things get, you should always have hope.’