I confess that I like Christmas. I typically resist all things popular, but if that ever happened with Christmas it won me over anyway.
The attraction surely has nothing to do with massive commercialization; nor do I need a specific holiday season to remember the birth of Jesus. Red and green are not my favorite colors. I’m pretty sure I would choose fasting over fruitcake and egg nog. And although falling snow is undeniably a beautiful sight, I would easily choose a warm-weather locale to a winter wonderland.
I still really like Christmas.
There is a hard-to-identify loveliness to the season—a “mood” as Howard Thurman once described it. Words like joy and peace define Christmas, actions like giving and singing are ubiquitous, and it is a time both to remember and to hope.
I grew up in a tiny house with a wonderful family and not much in terms of material possessions. Still, we celebrated Christmas each year, and I always had presents to open. I distinctly remember the time my Dad rushed in a couple of weeks before Christmas and breathlessly exclaimed, “Santa Claus was just here! He was in my bedroom!” Well, away to my parents’ bedroom window I flew like a flash, and as fate would have it, I just missed seeing Santa. But he had obviously been there since a huge gift-wrapped present was there with my name on it! To this day I cannot believe Santa was able to sneak that massive present in our tiny house in broad daylight without getting caught.
Did I mention it was a tiny house (with, for illustrative purposes only, no room to store a large present for a couple of weeks until Christmas)? And did I mention that I may have been a rather naive child?
I love imagining today the laughter my parents shared alone in their tiny bedroom that night. (And since the gift was a set of drums, I love knowing that someone else had the last laugh. That Santa is such a jokester!)
I am ready for Christmas.
Now, when I walk through the house and see our tree, it calls me back to Christmases past and propels me forward toward Christmases yet to come. Time marches on. My parents are now gone, my sisters are now grandmothers, and my daughters are now adults. But very soon my wonderful wife and our wonderful daughters will be together to celebrate that special day together and make more memories for future smiles.
Bring on Christmas.
My daughter and I decided to hike the scorched hills behind our house on Thanksgiving Eve to get a firsthand look at the aftermath of the Woolsey Fire, and we witnessed the vast expanse of earth charred to smoldering nothingness. It was breathtaking, and I’m not even talking about air quality. Imagine strolling through a gigantic ashtray with a spectacular mountain view of the sun dropping into the Pacific Ocean and that pretty much captures the scene.
Recently I finished a nice morning run on Zuma Beach just as the sun rose over the ocean and felt pretty good about myself when I pulled into the Arco station on the PCH. The Arco has the cheapest gas in Malibu, which isn’t saying a whole lot, but since I had to drive into Los Angeles that day and was in that part of town anyway it made sense to fill up. I pulled up to the pump behind a small SUV, placed the car in park, and glanced over to make sure my tank was next to the pump, but when I looked forward again I noticed that the SUV was in reverse and coming at me. I honked just a moment before impact. Well, the driver was a nice guy who felt terrible about the accident that did no damage to his vehicle but a number on the front end of mine. We exchanged information and left to face the day.
I flew to Oakland and back last Tuesday to facilitate a half-day session on conflict resolution for a group of pastors. The Uber driver from the airport to the conference did not stop talking for the entire trip, and on the flip side the driver that took me back said exactly two words–Which terminal?–in the full forty-five minutes. In between all that was an unexpected and cool experience.
Starting to Look Up 