The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree - Day 20

How do you make room for Christmas? Do you clean off the mantle? Maybe move pictures from atop the piano? Do you rearrange furniture to make room for the tree? How do you make room for Christmas in your life?

I am not sure about anyone else, but my life is very full. I work full time and then some. The boys’ schedules keep me busy. I try and keep it a secret but I also go work out a few times a week. None of this gives me a lot of spare time for things like making cookies, decorating trees, or making gingerbread houses. If I don’t have time for the smaller things like that, how do I make time for the bigger Christmas things? How do I make room for Hope? Peace? Joy? Love? If this season is supposed to be about honoring Christ’s birth how do I make room for that?

I heard a sermon once where the preacher equated preparing for Christ’s birth to preparing your home for the holiday season. There was a whole analogy of clearing out the living room so you can bring in the biggest tree and place it in the picture window in the front of the house so that it decorates both the inside, and also can be seen from outside the windows. It wasn’t a bad sermon, and I understand where he was trying to go, so I am choosing to ignore some obvious weakness of the analogy, as well as the whole, “did I really just hear a sermon about a Christmas tree?”

The boys and I had to move a trunk we use as an end table. We had to bring the tree and decorations up from the basement. In terms of actual rearranging the house that isn’t a very big commitment. The bigger commitment was the time it took to get the decorations together, and the time commitment to get the boys to agree to decorate the tree with me. How does that fit the analogy? Believe me there has been little Peace in my house this holiday season. If I struggle to carve out time to hang a garland how do I carve out time for Hope? If I failed to get it together to hang lights on the house, how much more likely am I to find the time for Joy? When people drive by my house, or come for a visit, I want them to see a beautifully decorated home, but people live here, and it definitely isn’t always a shiny inviting page from a holiday home magazine. I want people to look at my life and family and see Love, but again, I am human, and certainly flawed.

If I fail at reorganizing my life for these giant important themes of the advent season, can you blame me for failing to find time for silliness like gingerbread houses, or Christmas caroling? Except that somehow I do find time for some of the silliness. The boys and I did get the tree decorated. We watched the Charlie Brown special. We made time for a light parade with my sister and her kids. Maybe if I haven’t carved out a big place for Hope, Peace, Joy or Love, and if I myself am not a glowing example of those aspects, maybe it is enough that there are moments of these in my life.

Last night Matthew and his mama fell asleep on the couch cuddled up under blankets and a cat, and that was Peace. Every time my Paul and my Matthew do the Christmas dance, that is Joy. When Kat shares that she stopped on her way home to give food to homeless people, that is Hope. And, this feeling I have for these crazy, silly, fascinating group of people that make up my family, that is Love.

So maybe the analogy of cleaning your house to display the shining Christmas tree of perfection doesn’t work for me. Maybe a better analogy of preparing for Christmas is like pouring milk into a bowl of cereal. The bowl seems full before the milk, but there is still room to add it, and instead of displacing the cereal, or having to remove the cereal to make room for the milk, the milk flows around and fits into the available space. So maybe the important parts of Christmas are flowing around the other parts of my life and filling in the spaces? I’d like to believe that is so.