I love the little reminder that pops up on Facebook with an image of the Nativity and the statement that “The first Christmas was pretty simple. It’s okay if yours is too.” This significant statement both allows us to not be overwhelmed with elaborate, but also to remember what makes Christmas Christmas, and that is the Christmas Christ Child. Keep Christmas simple but don’t minimize the importance.

Christmas is spiritually complex as well as simple easy, in that Jesus did all the work, Mary labored in birth and Joseph labored in traveling and shepherding and Jesus labored in making it all come to fruition – human pain in and out of this world and God-level pain in the lamb being slain.

My pre-christmas weekend was filled with decorating and decorations, mine (got my tree lights on plus swept the empty boxes out of the living room as my “village” is now set up), and seeing the decorations of others especially helping a friend sell lots of treasures, plus seeing neighbors’ lights and etc…. I loved seeing the creches, new and old, as reminder of the real reason of the season… And I decompressed one moment in the sunshine Saturday, untangling mixed strands of golden plastic garland that called to me while I rested my feet sitting in a porch rocking chair.

UNTANGLED!!! 

Isn’t that our Christmas prep in a handful – TANGLED and then UNTANGLED or put back away still tangled for next year. Let us try to untangle it all. That’s our mental challenge for Christmas: a mixture simple beauty with the glitter of unsimple reality. It’s the hype that gets us – There is hype of the weather and you realize it’s only rain. There is hype of the news, yet if you shut off your viewing of the media blitz, you can live in the moment more clearly than living in fear. Then there is hype of the Christmas Season, ALL TANGLED WITH BUSY!!! Life TANGLING what JESUS ALREADY UNTANGLED. 

Jesus untangled the evil puzzle well before time on this earth began. The real meaning of Christmas is to give Jesus the opening on earth to crush evil, “he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”, and to now await His return. Jesus won, Jesus wins. We could celebrate in awe of the power and sorrow of the need for Jesus. And yet let us live in spiritual soothing, live in joy and live in a victorious mentality.  Not our victory but His, yet the spoils we enjoy are eternal life. Not that’s the present to unwrap! JOY in knowing our home is heaven! Imagine THAT tree of life!

Keep Christmas special and simple by remembering the JOY equating thinking of JESUS, then OTHERS, before Yourself. J.O.Y.

J Jesus

O thers

Y ourself 

That’s keeping Christmas simply but NOT MinimizingLY.

Amen