When Christmas Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas

I woke up this morning with two songs playing on repeat in my mind:

The first was the classic, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Mariah Carey…

​“They’re singing Deck the Halls,

But it’s not like Christmas at all,​

‘Cause I remember when you were here,

​And all the fun we had last year… 

The second song was the hymn,

“What Child is This?”…​“This, this is Christ the King,​

Whom shepherds guard and angels sing,​

Haste, haste to bring Him laud,

​The Babe, the Son of Mary.”

I sang and I chuckled. The irony. This was the perfect picture of the tension I had been feeling. The tension between two worlds colliding. On the one hand, there is a seasonal expectancy that revolves around traditions and nostalgia: Decorating the Christmas tree while watching fill in the blank. Driving around to look at Christmas lights. Out of the ordinary baking that is equally paired with out of the ordinary sugar consumption. Wrapping Christmas presents while listening to Bing Crosby. Anything and everything that makes Christmas feel like Christmas to you. And this changes over the years. Sometimes it’s a slow and subtle change that we don’t readily notice: “Remember when we would go see a movie every Christmas night? Why don’t we do that anymore?”

But other times it’s a jolting and unexpected change: like losing someone we didn’t expect to lose. The ripple effects seem never-ending, especially at Christmas, when traditions and nostalgia intersect with grief.

Whatever the case, or whatever the cause, there is often a lingering, pestering question that surfaces at some point during the Christmas season, whether we know the answer to the question or not: “What am I missing?”

Leighton Ford, in his book The Attentive Life, says, “Isn’t it true that we usually think of the seasons of the year less in terms of the dates they begin and end than in terms of their effect on us…”

Such a true statement. The problem though is that we often don’t recognize the long-lasting effect of the season until well after the season has passed. Perhaps that is the conundrum of Christmas. This time of year, we seem to be much more aware of ourpresent season. We are much more attuned to what it feels like and what it should feel like, leaving us feeling a little lost in translation.

In Malachi 4:2, the last chapter of the Old Testament, right before the Lord goes prophetically silent for 400 years, he says, “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall.” The hope that is wrapped up in that statement. The expectancy the Israelites must have felt going into that next year. But silence.

Maybe this is the year it will happen…the Sun of Righteousness will come to us. But silence.

Four hundred years went by. And these weren’t just “move on with your life,” type of years. They were marked with extreme violence and the upheaval of governmental systems and intense oppression around religious beliefs.

I’m sure it didn’t feel like a saving. It felt like a rejection.

“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.’ But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be.”Luke 1:26-29

I find it interesting that Mary was troubled. Not because she was visited by an angel, but because of the greeting given. “Greetings favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

Does that sound familiar? I currently have an ornament hanging from our Christmas tree that says, “Emmanuel, God with Us!” I look at it often, swaying against the pine needles, but it’s meaning sometimes becomes background noise. Why? And why is Mary startled with this idea of the Lord being with her?

Sometimes we’re startled by change. Other times we’re startled by remembering. And sometimes those two things work together beautifully, breaking into the silence and seeming rejection, to bring us back home. Sometimes in the midst of the change and in the remembering, that’s where we find the answer to the question, “What am I missing?”

“This, this is Christ the King,

​Whom shepherds guard and angels sing,

​Haste, haste to bring Him laud,​The Babe, the Son of Mary.”

God with us. The never-changing, always in our midst, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, God with us.

God with you, as you celebrate your first Christmas without your mom. God with you, as you quarantine and are forced to release all plans of Christmas festivities. God with you, as you struggle to believe that He does, in fact, love YOU. God with you, in this very moment. Tree or no tree. Lights or no lights. Party or no party. With or without the warm fuzzies. Even in the midst of laughing and crying. God with you.

And maybe that’s the gift. A Christmas that doesn’t feel like Christmas. Because it highlights the inability of tradition and nostalgia to bring lasting satisfaction. Instead, we are given the gift of constant Presence, which can transform the most broken of expectations and experiences. Presence that breaks through the silence. Presence that is saving and is making all things new. Even unrecognizable Christmas.