Deck Your Halls!

Drive out the darkness, for Jesus, the light of the world, has come.

Today, I shall attempt to convince you not to abandon the outer trappings of the Christmas season much like I convinced myself yet again this year.

This week, my husband and I decked our halls with boughs of holly. I was tired, stressed, and I didn’t feel like going through all the fuss and bother. But it was this week or not at all due to another packed December schedule. It almost didn’t happen. I am the one that usually makes it happen, and I wasn’t feeling particularly jolly. But another little glimmer inside of me knew I would be giving into something…nebulous. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but distinctly the opposite of good at the same time, if I didn’t haul the Christmas stuff down from the attic this year as I always do.

The reason I decided to go through with it was this:

The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,

The Light of the world is Jesus!

Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in;

The Light of the world is Jesus.

Come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee.

Sweetly the light has dawned upon me.

Once I was blind, but now I can see.

The Light of the world is Jesus.

I am a Baptist, and we Baptists (and most other protestants) rather pride ourselves on our grasp of the metaphysical tenants of our faith without all that silly outward “Catholic stuff” like candles and incense and kneeling and the liturgical calendar and pretty cathedrals and beautiful music. No, sirree! We can celebrate the birth of our Lord without a single string of Christmas lights. And, of course, that is true.

However…what we protestants fail to grasp is that the outward has a deep and significant impact on the inward. Posture, surroundings, aesthetics, the whole nine yards.

Everyone has experienced this phenomenon. I will illustrate with a personal story.

Back in the days before marriage when I worked in customer service, I could leave the house in the worst funk you’ve ever seen, feeling anxious, depressed and miserable. Once I got to work and started interacting with customers, I felt compelled by courtesy to put a smile on my face and change my vocal tone. (Isn’t it odd how we do this for complete strangers, but won’t do it for our families? Hmm.) Within a half an hour, I would realize that I no longer felt anxious, depressed and miserable. My outward behavior of putting on a smile and adding a lilt to my voice in spite of how I felt, changed the way I felt to an astonishing extent.

This year, my soul needed those Christmas lights. Needed them badly. I suspect the older I get, the more desperately I’ll need them.

I remember Christmases as a child, when my parents were the ones in charge of setting the tone in the house and of decking the halls at Christmas time. It was such a happy time for me, young and relatively carefree as I was. I reveled in the beauty of the lights, of unpacking all the old Christmas ornaments and greeting them like old friends each year. I remember playing with the plush nativity scene my mom sewed and stuffed with polyfil from a kit. I remember bundling up from head to toe and plunging out into freezing Michigan winters with our church family to sing carols to shut-ins, coming back to church for cookies and hot chocolate afterward. I remember my dad carefully counting out five one dollar bills into our hands, bundling the whole family into the car for a Christmas shopping trip at the dollar store so my brother and I could buy one gift for each member of the family. It was, believe it or not, a financial sacrifice for my dad to do even this with and for us, I understand more and more as I get older. These were the meager years of our lives when my dad made perhaps 12,000 a year while my mom stayed home with us.

All of this required great effort from my parents who were tired, stressed, strapped for cash and dealing with health issues. But they did it anyway, and it created beautiful memories. The finer points of theology had certainly not yet dawned upon me. I just knew that it meant we were celebrating the day Jesus was born so that he could live, die, rise again, and take away our sins. And it was jolly good fun! And for years, even well into adulthood, I relished setting up the Christmas tree, sitting in the dark, gazing at the Christmas lights and everything else that goes with the season.

But time is a thief, you see. It steals your youth, your inner bouyancy. It brings care and burdens. And before you know it, sometimes, a certain coldness creeps in and chills everything. Pretty soon, you’re the one gatekeeping merriment. You’re not the child anymore, you’re the adult who has to drag down the boxes of ornaments from the attic and your back hurts and you’d rather go to bed early.

In my case, it’s a little worse, even. I don’t have children of my own pestering me to do it, their faces full of hope. Much less motivation.

It would be ever so easy to send all the ornaments and decor to Goodwill and have done with it.

But…it’s so dark this time of year and every time I see my neighbor’s Christmas lights up twinkling brightly against the black sky, I hum to myself, “The light of the world is Jesus.”

And so I drag everything downstairs and start putting it up. Then I turn on some Christmas music and inevitably start singing along. And then when the night falls, the lights on the Christmas tree remind me that Christ has bruised the serpent’s head, dealing sin its death blow. And though it is dark now, the light is growing and at the end of all things, will drive out the dark entirely, and along with it, the pain in my neck, the sorrow in my heart, and every other vestige of the Fall.

So, deck your halls. It can’t do you any harm and it will likely do you some good.

And it needn’t be extravagant.

We got our Christmas tree out of the bottom of our swimming pool from which it was growing. True story. We even have pictures to prove it!

The swimming pool has been sitting empty for decades and there were trees growing up through the lining when we moved in. We’ve been needing to clean it out for some time, so we killed two birds with one stone as it were.

It’s a wonky little Christmas tree, but I like it.

So, deck your halls. Even if all you can bring yourself to do is stick some pretty green boughs in a vase and drape a little strand of lights around it. Turn on those lights and remember that your Light has come.

In closing, a little song.

How Far is it to Bethlehem

by Frances Chesterton

How far is it to Bethlehem?
Not very far.
Shall we find the stable-room
lit by a star?
Can we see the little child,
is he within?
If we lift the wooden latch
may we go in?

May we stroke the creatures there,
ox, ass, or sheep?
May we peep like them and see
Jesus asleep?
If we touch his tiny hand
will he awake?
Will he know we've come so far
just for his sake?

Great kings have precious gifts,
and we have naught,
little smiles and little tears
are all we brought.
For all weary children
Mary must weep.
Here, on his bed of straw sleep,
children, sleep.

God in his mother's arms,
babes in the byre,
sleep as they sleep
who find their heart's desire.

Throughout this month I wish for you and I, impoverished weary souls that we are, rest and peace in the truth of Christ’s coming, His payment for and pardon from our sins, and in His sovereign care of the future.

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…

P.S. Next week, I’m going to publish my baking edition full of gluten free Christmas baking recipes for all who might be interested. I had intended to publish it as an extra newsletter this week, but I’m absolutely swamped right now. Please forgive me! At any rate, I’ve found a lot of excellent recipes over the years since discovering my immune system was making antibodies to gluten, and would like to share the bounty! So, get excited. As always, if you enjoy reading my stuff, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d consider updating your subscription from free to paid. It would help me immensely, as I continue writing and seeking publication for my two novels. Have a wonderful week, everyone!