Remember the Wonder

Few days in the calendar year elicit more trips down memory lane than Christmas Eve. No other holiday comes close. My birthday doesn’t compete. Pound for pound and minute for minute, my waking hours on December 24 take me down a five decade long rabbit trail of nostalgia:

• Four-year-old me peeking out my bedroom window to see what I was convinced was Rudolph’s glowing nose hovering over our town. (Years later I realized it was the light on top of the radio tower…I was not the saltiest french fry in the Happy Meal.)
  
• Twelve-year-old me sitting with extended family at our hometown funeral home, mourning the death of a grandfather we’d bury the day after Christmas.
  
• Teenage me culminating a week of Christmas services at the church of my childhood, shivering in the freezing cold outdoor scenes we’d set up for our community.
  
• Young adult me stepping into my then-fiancée’s family celebration at her grandparents’ home, still relegated to the kids’ table while the grown ups chatted in the formal dining room.

…and the list goes on: keeping my mom occupied while my dad had new living room windows installed, the best Domino’s Pizza I’ve ever tasted in my life, assembling Big Wheels for my sons and doll houses for my daughter, years of late nights at a local performing arts center, tearing down and loading out after a different kind of church Christmas service…

And there will – by God’s grace – be more Christmas Eve memories to come. More Christmas Eve memories to make.

But as I reminisce today, it’s not as a four year old. Or a twelve year old. Or a teenager or young man or fiancé or young father.

Today I look at Christmas Eve as a Pops. Two years ago we celebrated our first Christmas with our first granddaughter. This year we added two more grands to the mix. By next Christmas we’ll have at least four, maybe more (bring ’em on).

When your kids are at the age and stage where three grandbabies show up inside of eight months, it makes for a ridiculously delightful, supremely fun Christmas season. Presents are stacked. Budgets are blown. Pleas from our kids-now-parents to “keep it simple” are ignored. Any excuse to snatch a kid and take them to see Christmas lights is taken advantage of. Christmas books? Let’s read all the Christmas books.

And yet.

And yet I have to remind myself to remind my grandchildren – one of whom can understand but the rest of whom can’t, quite yet – that it’s not about the lights. Or the gifts. Or the hot chocolate or Christmas jammies or stockings or movies.

I have to remind the younger versions of me that it was never about radio tower Rudolph or whispered Christmas Eve conversations at a funeral home or pizza or kids’ tables or performing arts centers.

It’s simply about Jesus.

And the simplicity of Jesus makes the complexity of the season somewhat simpler. The reality of Jesus makes a fanciful season more sober.

As adults, we no longer go into holiday seasons with the luxury of a singular focus on what’s under the tree. No, we head into the holidays as adults do: with job pressures and mortgages and aging parents and relational friction and the weight of a thousand cares settled firmly upon our shoulders.

But even so, the simplicity of Jesus remains. Even so, the beauty of the manger lingers. Even so, it’s precisely because of the relational friction and aging parents and the weight of a thousand cares that the incarnation means so much. It’s precisely because of the fallen nature of humanity and the fallenness of our own souls that the heavy hearts of Christmas can be lighter because Light came into the world.

So on this day, whether your Christmas spirit trends towards Hallmark or hardship, let’s look beyond the stuff of earth and glimpse the stuff of heaven. On this day, as we remember the wonder, let’s remember it’s not about the lights and the music or the silent tears and heavy hearts. Let’s let those things point us to the wonder which is found in Jesus.

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