All the best Christmases

Some of you don’t care about Christmas; you just want it to be over (Hi, Andrew).

Some of you are hitting critical mass on Christmas — oh, it’s humming. You’re on your way to someone you love’s house tonight. You’re going to look at Christmas Lights with a pretty girl you like. Or your kids really don’t know what’s in those presents under the tree.

And some of you are Christmas dead inside. You love Christmas and every year around November you get excited. But it’s a different excitement than last year or the year before. It’s an excitement that says “Maybe this year it’ll start getting better again. Maybe this year will be magical.”

That’s me. And I hope now I’m writing to just me and that you’re more in the first description.

Is that just 33? Does Christmas become wishful thinking mixed with a hefty dose of reality mixed with the wassail? Does all the magic feel like marketing? Do all the movies feel tired of carrying that same story to you this year? Does it have to feel harder to get people together and get them to enjoy being together? Why are traditions only fun the first time around and forced the second?

Maybe it’ll be better next year.

I miss all the best Christmases.

It’s funny because I can’t identify one Christmas at my grandparent’s house on Tall Pine Road in Unicoi. Our Christmas was habitual, a liturgy that could have used some shaking up, you know, to keep it interesting. But I’m 33 now and can see the beauty in letting something be mundane and imperfect.

We’d start with dinner. My cousin Drew and I would make Christmas Vacation references. Then we’d open presents in the sitting room by the piano in the corner with the Baptist Hymnal on the rest. If there’s a ballgame on, Dee Daw, Dad and Uncle Alan are watching it. If the Cowboys are playing, my dad is wishing ill upon them and their families. Uncle Alan is telling Dee Daw a story about not filling up his Tacoma with gas for 6 straight months. And I’m snagging green and red M&M’s from the bowl on the end table.

Later we’ll turn up 107, just past the Volkswagen Beetle covered in Christmas Lights with a lit up Santa Claus in the front seat (let me clarify that “lit up” Santa is a glowing Christmas decoration and not an overindulged man dressed as Saint Nick and passed out in the front seat of a love bug, though it’s possible that has also happened in Unicoi). Back there we’ll join my Dad’s family at my Uncle Steve and Aunt Fran’s house.

I do remember Christmas 2019 when I first saw Behold the Lamb of God at the Bijou Theater. For the unfamiliar, BTLOG is a concept album by Andrew Peterson that tells the story of Jesus’ birth starting with the Passover in Exodus and right on through to the shepherds and the manger.

I knew I was supposed to feel something during this show. I don’t know what our deal is in the evangelical tradition, but we seem to think if you don’t cry during certain experiences then maybe you don’t have the Holy Spirit to start with. But anxiety, of course, is a very helpful way to force yourself to feel things like peace, hope, and joy. It works every time and I’ve never had mental breakdowns because of that exact situation, no not once.

I was having a mental breakdown in the back row of the Bijou Theater. Everyone in the room was in front of me, which meant I could imagine how much richer of an experience they were having.

“What is wrong with me?” might be the worst question in the English language.

Andrew played “Is He Worthy?” which is a call and response song that people lost their minds over and instantly got vaulted to the category of “You must like this song or leave the Christian faith”. And given my emotional state, I did not enjoy it and spiraled further.

On the back of the program was a short prayer “Gather us beneath your wings.”

I let out a breath and felt the words, “You can hide underneath me.” Another breath went out and with it went the anxiety. It’s like all that was anxious in me sat down.

The show went on intermission, then came back and played the entire album straight through to the shepherds and the manger. Hearing the story with folky music played by musicians who live in Nashville and make a living as musicians (which means they must be pretty good) opened the story up like I was hearing it for the first time. As if God had invited me to sit on his lap while he pulled open a big book, licked his fingers and said “Now, where were we? Ah, yes!”

You know, like when you’re a kid and everything is magic: when a large, jolly man could come down your chimney and leave a bike. When it never snowed on Christmas Eve but your grandparent’s cabin home on the hill is still the coziest place God ever willed onto this planet. When the skies outside Bethlehem could have rained down the glory of God as his angels put on a concert for dirty, smelly field hands.

I believed this story was true. I believed it from the soles of my Brooks up to the Tennessee hat on my head.

And I still do.