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I’ve been looking for Christmas.
What? You didn’t know it was missing?
Well, it has been – for 12 months or so.
I’ve been looking for it ever since Halloween,
when the first Christmas decorations began decking the halls . . . er,
aisles at local shops and stores. Merchants put out the Christmas
candy and the Christmas cards. They stacked the shelves with lights
and tinsel and stuffed bears that sit in a rocking chair and sing
“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” when you push a button. I like
Christmas decorations, even in late October, and I’ve been wandering
up and down the seasonal aisles every week for nearly two months. I
found some good stuff, but I didn’t find Christmas. Evidently
Christmas isn’t in the decorations.
So I started looking for Christmas on the radio.
Two local radio stations have been trying to out-Christmas each other
with holiday music non-stop since Valentine’s Day. OK, that’s a
slight exaggeration. But not by much. They’ve been playing Christmas
music for a long time, and to be honest I’ve actually been enjoying it
this year. There’s nothing quite like hearing Nat King Cole sing “The
Christmas Song,” or Karen Carpenter sing “Merry Christmas, Darling.”
This is good stuff, and I fully expected to find Christmas as I sang
along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on “Joy to the World.” I love
doing that. It makes me feel . . . I don’t know . . . joyful. But it
didn’t help me find Christmas, because Christmas isn’t in the music.
Which means it must be at the mall. At least,
that’s what I figured as I drove to one of my favorite shopping Meccas
to do my Christmas shopping (“my Christmas shopping” means shopping
for Anita – “Anita’s Christmas shopping” means shopping for me, our
five children and four-going-on-five grandchildren, her parents, our
collective brothers and sisters, our friends and pretty much everyone
else. This is what as known as “balance” in our relationship).
I knew exactly what I wanted to get, and the
store had plenty of what I was looking for. My shopping was quick and
painless – as long as you don’t count the “Favorite Things” incident
(whenever I hear “My Favorite Things” by Barbra Streisand over the
mall Muzak machine I have to stop whoever is closest to me to complain
that that really isn’t a Christmas song and I don’t know why they keep
playing it with the other Christmas music. For some reason the person
I complained to sort of complained to mall security about me. Go
figure).
I found Anita’s present at the mall. And I found
a new friend (evidently the whole “My Favorite Things” thing bugs mall
security, too).
But I didn’t find Christmas, because Christmas
isn’t at the mall.
Then the other day I was thumbing through my
Bible. I paused in the second chapter of Luke in the New Testament:
“And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed . . . And Joseph
also went . . . unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem . .
. To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child . .
. And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in
swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger . . .”
I flipped through a few more pages and read about
this same miraculous child as a remarkable man, and the extraordinary
things that happened to him in a place called Gethsemane. And on a
hill called Golgotha. And in a stunningly empty garden tomb.
And suddenly, there it was: Christmas. It wasn’t
in the decorations. It wasn’t in the music. And it wasn’t at the
mall. It was in a few simple, familiar words laden with meaning. But
somehow those words and the powerful reality of their message made the
decorations seem more beautiful, the music more lovely and the mall
less . . . you know . . . mall-ish
I guess that’s what happens when you find
Christmas. It finds YOU.
And it makes everything . . . you know . . .
better.
© 2007 Joseph Walker |
