The Pastor’s Pen

Let’s Carry Christmas in Our Hearts

Unless you just recently fall to earth from some other planet, you may have noticed that Christmas and Christmastime is a pretty big deal around these parts. Well, more than a big deal, Christmas is a HUGE deal. And anything that big is bound to be charged with all kinds of freight, as the saying goes. Christmas is indeed packing a great deal of freight: energy, multiple meanings, history, emotion and much more. Christmas carries it all and usually it carries it better than many of us who celebrate the holiday and/or the season.

For Christians, however, the real core of what we celebrate is the Incarnation, the coming of God  “in the flesh.” This is more than reason enough to celebrate and party. All the rest is just “trimmings” on the proverbial tree no matter how important some say those trimmings are. If you don’t believe me, I refer you to that sage of the season, Dr. Suess. Remember the epiphany that the Grinch had when he realized that, just when he thought he had stolen Christmas from all the Who’s down in Whoville, it still came. It came in their hearts and they gathered and sang for joy. The Who’s needed neither all those gifts they had wrapped nor all those decorations they had hung. They didn’t even need the Who Roast Beast! This is because, like the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, the Who’s carried Christmas in their hearts.

In our day and time, at this time of year, we are bombarded with messages that can make even the most saintly of us more than a little bit “Grinchy” about Christmas. One way to help us stay connected with the reason for the season, the birth of the Christ, is to celebrate a season of preparation for Christmas, the season that the church calls Advent. Through song, reflection, ritual and the hearing of scripture, we can relearn to look ahead to Christmas with a positive and non-commercial anticipation. In Advent, we can be preparing our hearts to appreciate the genuine miracle to which this holy day points: that God so loved the world that he came and dwelt among us, giving all the power to become God’s children.

Please consider celebrating the season of Advent with the church family at 10 am on Sunday   mornings, November 30, December 7, 14, and 21. We’ll light the candles of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, and we’ll sing songs of waiting and longing. The Family Christmas Program will be part of the service on the twenty-first. And to cap it all off, December 24 at 7:00 pm we shall have our traditional Candlelight   Service of Lessons and Carols. Please feel free to invite your families, friends, and neighbors to any or all of these celebrations. Come to one or all of them yourself. And let us all carry the spirit of Christmas in our hearts throughout the coming season and year.

Advent blessing to each and all,