Dear Friends in Christ,
“Merry Christmas!” St. Paul’s Church – the parish family, staff and vestry – wish you God’s special presence, peace and every blessing.
Of course, I realize that the Christmas season is often anything but a time for experiencing God’s presence, peace and blessing. Don’t you think it’s a little odd what we do to ourselves during the holidays? It’s meant to be a time for basking in the light of God’s love, but we make it a time for magnification instead. And the net effect tends to detract from the significance of the occasion and to diminish our joy. By magnification I mean that most of our expectations get magnified during the Christmas season. Our expectations become inflated lots of good food, plenty of gifts, contacting and being contacted by everyone we’ve ever known, family closeness and harmony, happy times with good friends, and world peace, too. Then those inflated expectations become pressures, which drive or defeat us.
It’s nearly impossible to achieve all this, and some of it’s simply beyond our reach. But lots of us knock ourselves out trying to live up to all those heightened expectations anyway – especially if we have young children close at hand. While others of us become more disappointed than at any other time of year, because we’re more keenly aware than ever that our circumstances are less than what we wish they were.
Instead of celebrating Jesus’ birth and what it means in the grand scheme of things, we become distracted. We’re distracted by the stress of getting everything done just right. We’re distracted by the disappointment that everything isn’t the way we heartily wish it were. Stress and distress make Christmas less than merry for many of us.
There is help for us, though. The secret is in the original meaning of Christmas. Christmas is the yearly reminder that God came to live with us. Christmas celebrates that single conviction. The angel came and said, “He will be called Immanuel, God with us.” Jesus was born to show us, concretely, that God is with us. God is with you – now, always. Whenever you feel the stress of all those additional Christmas demands or the distress of those heightened disappointments, remember, stop, take a breath, and remember God is with us. When you feel those feelings starting to creep into your mind or body, you might even say it to yourself. Take a breath and say, “God is with me.” That will help you to remember Jesus, and that memory will help you to feel greater peace. That peace will open the way for you to be better able to see God’s blessings and to pass them on to others.
May you know God’s presence, peace and blessing as you prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth!
Affectionately in Christ,
Phil Tierney +
Rector