Over Expecting at Christmas

O come, let us worship and bow down:  let us kneel before the Lord our maker.  For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.  To day if ye will hear his voice.  Psalm 95:6  
Sing a Christmas carol at this link:  Oh, Come All Ye Faithful

How Valid Are Our Expectations of Christmas?    

By Lou Guntzelman  (Community Press 12-4-2002)

I’ve already told you about my Christmas experiment.  Throughout the year when the 25^th of some month comes along, say July 25^th, I’ll remark to several people, “Did you know that five months from today is Christmas Day?”  Ninety-nine percent of the time they’ll frown or make a negative response as, “Oh, don’t remind me!”  That reaction does not occur from mentioning any other feast or holiday.

Why the bad feeling about Christmas?  It’s too busy, has too many expectations, costs too much, and bruises our hearts.  The Christmas season has the potential for bringing disappointment, increasing loneliness, and reminding us of our fragile humanness.

The words most associated with Christmas time are “merry” and “happy.”  Beginning in childhood, this season holds out to us promises of satisfying deep human needs.  Decorations, lights, food, friends, TV specials, songs, and gifts all collaborate in promising our hearts on heck of a satisfying time.  Who doesn’t enter this time of year expecting to experience an increase of love, togetherness, a happy home and smiling families basking in closeness?

Yet, the warmth and closeness hoped for often proves elusive.  The home we want to come back to is never quite the same.  And instead of a long sweet dose of family closeness, old wounds may be reopened, or sibling rivalries flare anew.  We realize the kids aren’t satisfied with their gifts, parties fall flat, and the one I hoped to hear from seems to have forgotten me.  “All is calm, all is bright” never arrives, but “All is hectic and busy” does.  On top of this, we now have terrorists or a war to worry about.

By adulthood, we conclude that Christmas doesn’t fulfill its promises.  Then some take one further negative step.  We think our Christmas hunger remains unsatisfied because of “me.”  Something’s wrong with me.  The reason I don’t feel the warm closeness of my spouse or friend or family is because I’m not very lovable.  The implied joys of Christmas don’t happen for me because I don’t get ready soon enough, don’t have enough money, ob because I’m just a loser.

We miss the point about Christmas.  Christians began to celebrate Christmas long ago because they realized that left to ourselves, we mess things up.  Because of an inherent weakness called original sin,* we tend to exploit others and be exploited.  We confuse priorities, use others instead of loving them, make poor choices, and are way too selfish.  “When human beings are involved, given enough time, things will go badly,” mused a wise man.

No wonder that not only Christmas time, but life itself, is often found disappointing.  We can never make ourselves perfectly happy.  We need to be saved from ourselves and given the grace and energy to live well.  The joy to be found in Christmas is not that our humanness is suspended for the month of December, but that in the midst of our fragile humanness God comes here because he loves us so much—and that he’ll stay.  “Christ the Savior is born.”  That’s the good news of Christmas.

We have always thought that if we won a war, recovered from a recession, dispelled loneliness by getting married, developed a new medical technique, got rid of polio, found a new spouse, eliminated terrorists, Hitlers, and drunk driver, or a hundred other problems, then we’d all be happy—and have ecstatic Christmases besides. 

G. K.  Chesterton knew where the problem lies.  He received a questionnaire once.  A question asked, “What’s the main thing wrong with the world?”  He answered, “Me.”  We forget we live in an imperfect world, are imperfect humans, and what we need most is to find meaning to all of this, not just comfort.  He also wrote, “The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was.  It is not merely getting better or merely getting worse; there is one thing that the world does, it wobbles.”  And God says, “Hold my hand when it wobbles too much for you.”

- Father Lou Guntzelman is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.  His books, So Heart and Mind Can Fill,  Come Healing God, and A Country Called Life:  More Reflections for Living, are available at Montgomery Book Co., Joseph Beth Booksellers, and Barnes & Noble. 


 *The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not believe there is such a thing as "original sin"--read more on this link:   Original Sin.