Christmas is fast approaching and this year I am not going to be irritable and annoyed at the commercial slant and the deleting of Christ from Christmas. I used to get really upset with the word Xmas and incredibly self righteous and cynical about the whole Christmas season. I wouldn't put my tree up until the last week before Christmas. I even considered not having one as it was obviously such a pagan tradition. I felt that I was going to focus on Jesus and ignore all the excessive spending and decorating.
But then I was browsing in a rather tasteful shop and saw a toy car carrying a miniature christmas tree and it was so cool I went home and copied the idea. Tying a tiny sprig of conifer to my Mercedes Benz looked great and led me to thinking about a wreath for the door and the slow but steady trickle of Christmas decorations began.
I thought I would restrain myself. I was still holding on to a little piece of spiritual self- righteous indignation and intellectual snobbery.
Then I went to church and my pastor blew my superior spiritual nonsense out of the window by declaring how much he loved the whole season, the Christmas tree decorations, the Christmas jumpers, the nativity plays that feature all kinds of creatures not related to the nativity story. He has his tree up from the end of November!
I pondered his unbridled enthusiasm for the secular aspects of Christmas and thought ....
'Who am I kidding. It is miserable and grey outside and we all need cheering up.'
The final straw was reading Mere Christianity by C S Lewis. I quote .....
" There is no good trying to be more spiritual then God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. "
So I let go of all my silly superior mindset nonsense, kicked out the cynicism and made myself an Advent calendar.
It was time to enjoy Advent, the preparation time before Christmas, the waiting game. The countdown to the big day when we remember that God invaded our world and booted out self righteous religious nonsense and killed off the whole concept that being good and kind could somehow earn us points towards a pass to heaven.
I saw the card above and it made me very happy. So here it is with no real tie to Christmas except for the fact it is all about having some fun and not taking yourself too seriously.
My place is decked out in its finest Christmas apparel and I jolly well hope it snows.
I'm glad for a chance to ponder Christmas and looking forward to the next earth shattering super invasion of God onto our messy planet. As CS Lewis states, the next time God interrupts will be when the author walks on to the stage and the play is over. And I quote ...
" ... when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. "