It is mid day, just days after the the celebrations of the holidays (I won’t say how many or few … for fear I may be befriended by my Christmas-all-year-adoring friends) and the sky is darkening already. The day began with the most spectacular sunrise, filling the sky with pinks, oranges, corals, even almost reds … and in my heart I heard my father’s voice red sky in morning, sailors take warning.
As I sat in my living room, amid boxes of Christmas decor, carefully packed away for next year, I felt as if that beautiful sunrise was a foreboding … but that could also be due to my recent check of the weather forecast … ten days of rain are coming.
January is not my favorite month of the year, whether clinical or psychosomatic, I seem to struggle with a seasonal downturn in my mind and spirit. Rain does not help this reality.
Though I am not one who listens to Christmas tunes in July, hangs the lights just after Halloween or keeps the tree up until epiphany, I long for Christmas to last all year.
It is in January when my annual heart’s cry is similar to what we might find in the pages of Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
“It is winter in Narnia,” said Mr. Tumnus, “and has been for ever so long…. always winter, but never Christmas.”
The season of hope and peace and joy and love has been replaced by rain and dark and flu season and reminders of the pandemic. It is the season of …
almost, but not quite.
That is where we are … almost, but not quite. Christ has come as the babe in the manger who grew up to die on a sinner’s cross so that we might live with the Spirit. But … he has not come back yet and that is what our souls are reminded of when the Christmas season ends … for it should never end.
We have sung our carols of hope … now we have have to put their lyrics into practise, to live the hope we sang even when the morning skies are red with warning. This is the hard work of Christmas, living it day in and day out, even when there are no festive advent chocolates to sweeten the walk.
January is not where I expect life or Christmas to be found. And that is my personal challenge … to look for, to be the vessel through which the hope of Christmas can, unexpectedly, be found.
Today is known as Tweleth Night, or the eve of Ephiphany, when many Christians celebrate the Magi’s arrival and confirmation that the new babe was the reincarnation of God. It marks the end of the Christmas season … yet,
maybe
if we have experienced the hope, peace, love and joy of Christmas,
if we, like the Magi,
still seek Him …
Maybe we can have Christmas every day of the year … even when the rain clouds come.
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. Howard Thurman from his poem, “The Work of Christmas”
itsawonderfilledlife 