It's Christmas Time in the City

I'm sitting at a terminal in NYC as I write this, quite happy to not be surrounded by Yankees paraphernalia to the extent that I had expected, and waiting to board my flight in an hour and a half for Chicago. Eventually, I will be home. Or what used to be home, anyway.

There is something nostalgic for each of us as we go home, something that makes us remember the bad times and the good ones in slightly skewed lights. The worst experiences may be darkened, and the best glorified still further, but most seem to fade into the average, leaving you with a vast recollection of thoughts and memories, but only a handful of lucid ones.

Christianity is, in a way, like this. We remember the best of God (Jesus coming to die for our sins), as well as the worst (when we feel abandoned, even though at such times, it is invariably we who have strayed), but much of our daily lives fades into the grayness of the past. It is remembered, and yet forgotten.

The children of Israel experienced more miracles in a couple months than most of us will see in a lifetime. The plagues on Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, water from the rock, manna from heaven: they saw so much...and yet remembered so little. Victor Hugo wrote, "The most sublime poetry is worth less to the stomach than a piece of cheese." It is such a succinct and ringing condemnation of our human nature. Our immediate wants and needs make us forget all else. The very God Who had saved the Hebrews became an enemy Who had dragged them out in the desert to kill them as soon as they became hungry.

I see evidence of it in my life, too. I've had wonderful conversations with my closest friends, gone on terrific dates that leave my lips tingling, and gone to fantastic parties where I laughed until my sides hurt...only to get upset with the first person who does something I really don't care for. I've gotten thousands of dollars in bonuses or stock upswings, then later on cussed out a traffic light for having the nerve to inconvenience me another two or three minutes.

Right now, the airport is bustling with people headed home or on vacation. Christmas carols were heard playing on the radio earlier. One of my favorites is Silver Bells. "It's Christmas time in the city..." And though it is right to celebrate this time (though it is most assuredly not Jesus' actual birthday; that, according to scholars, was almost certainly in the spring sometime), we so often seem to forget Jesus at the other times of the year. We remember Him and know about Him, but where is the real celebration? I'm not suggesting caroling in May and leaving wreaths and Christmas lights up all year, but many of us seem to honestly celebrate Jesus only at this time and Easter.

It's Christmas time now, but we should act like it's Christmas time all the time. His presents are not good only for December, nor even for the next year, or ten years, or even the rest of our lives. They are good for eternity; should we not celebrate more than one month and then another spring weekend?

It's not a matter of trying harder. Trying to celebrate is like an always single person trying to be genuinely happy that their always-dating-someone friend swooped in on the person the first person was interested in and is getting engaged. It has to come from the heart or it will come out flat and insincere, not only making the initial attempt worthless, but poisoning those times when some actual excitement is felt.

It's a matter of the heart. It's a matter of how we see Jesus, of how we view God. Our false images of God paint Him as magnificent, but yet not worth worshiping from the bottom of our hearts year-round. It's as though we knock Him down to our level of understanding because we can't comprehend Him, but with our understanding flawed by our human nature, we add flaws to God. In our heads, He is either not as powerful as He is, or as loving, or as generous, or as...anything good you care to name. Until we view God as something more wonderful than anything else, our heart-felt celebration of His Son's birth will never be more than annual.