Good Monday morning! I hope that very few of you have to go back to work this morning. Wait until after the new year starts to slog on up the hill again. Even the school kids are out for a week or so. How was your Christmas? The usual question involves Santa Claus and a list of presents you did or did not receive. We'll set that one aside and just ask: Did you have a Christmas full of Christ this year? I certainly did, and I'm glad of it this morning. For a glimpse of the snow we are missing, go on out to the east coast (on the Internet) and search some of the web cams out yonder. Snow falls on New Bern, N.C. about once each century, but they have some this morning. Snow was expected even in Atlanta last night and this morning. Yup, Atlanta is colder than we are this morning, although that is supposed to change on our end around Thursday. The weather in the south kind of leads into my topic for today: backwards.
Christmas is over for this year. The celebrations are finished, the presents unwrapped, and the trees will start coming down to be packed or thrown away for another year. However... we have that backwards as with many things in the modern world view. Few people knew of the arrival of Messiah back in the day. Many more knew of it after the birth. We should begin the celebration on Christmas Day, not conclude it. The day of Christmas should be announced with trumpet calls and ringing bells to come to worship the newborn King. We should, like the shepherds, then make our trip to see this thing at our church service or at a family gathering. Then we should hold a two-year celebration of worship like the wise men did, traveling across the country to see a different Christmas service. Okay, maybe the two year thing wouldn't work for most of us today. For some reason, we celebrate in the reverse order. We have this intense anticipation of the holiday, then some celebration, and finally on December 26th, this huge letdown as the celebration is declared "done". We just have it backwards is all.
The merchants are expected to try keeping the celebration of shopping going this week with end-of-year and post-Christmas sales. I saw a couple of "Santa didn't bring what you wanted?" sales advertised yesterday on the Internet. That of course is not quite what I meant by starting the celebration on Christmas Day, but that does speak to the world we live in. Holiday shopping has made a comeback it seems, and that is not all bad unless that is the only thing a person sees in Christmas. We can praise God for the improving economy. Perhaps with that good news in mind, some of those stingy employers will start hiring once more and ease the workload on those employees who are nearly worn out from the extra work heaped on them a couple of years ago. That won't happen in every case; some CEO's met the three ghosts on Christmas Eve, took another swig of single-malt, and had their personal assistants send ghostly pink slips. Imagine the poor fellow in the unemployment line this morning turning around to see the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in line behind him. After more than two years of the Great Recession, as it is called, those of us who lost our jobs can hardly be confused with the wealthy miser Scrooge!
While we may have the Christmas celebration backwards, that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the season and look forward to that next great holiday: Easter! The first day of the new year is not a holy day, in case you thought of that one. Our holidays came from "holy day" and at one time were limited to church celebrations. While there are many other holidays between now and Easter, I like to look forward to Easter as that is what Jesus' birth brings to mind right after Christmas. The book ends of his mission to save us you might say.
Think about the joy of Christmas today, and get ready for a wonderful new year!
Bucky
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