DOWN HOME: Anticipating Christmas

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Here’s the hardest part about these weeks leading up to Christmas: Anticipation.

Decades later, I suffer from exactly the opposite holiday malady that afflicted me when I was a child. Back then, I couldn’t wait until Christmas.

The anticipation began building sometime between the Fourth of July and Columbus Day, when our family always received a copy of my favorite book. No, it wasn’t the Bible. Hey, I was a kid, not an apostle.

It was the Sears Christmas catalog, commonly known as “the Wish Book.” It should’ve been known as “the Book of Common Covetousness.”

If I’d spent as much time poring over novels as I did devouring that Sears catalog, I could’ve become the most well-read 12-year-old in America.

Even now, I vividly recall the subtle dry-musty smell of that book. I practically memorized the boys’ section, dog-eared my favorite pages and then marked the toys I hoped Santa and/or Mother and Daddy would put under the tree.

I probably enjoyed the prospect of receiving Christmas toys out of that fascinating catalog as much as—or maybe more than—I ever enjoyed playing with them. Anticipation multiplied the pleasure. And that brings me to today.

Waiting for Christmas isn’t really difficult. Now that I’m middle aged (and unless I intend to contend for the World’s Oldest Man title someday, I’ve got to admit 53 is middle aged), I don’t get in a hurry about birthdays or Christmases. They’ll get here soon enough.

But I do find anticipating Christmas to be quite a challenge. Anticipation requires that sweet commodity so abundant to little boys and girls but apparently so unavailable to grownups.


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Time.

When I was a kid, I took time to savor the possibilities of that Wish Book. I imagined myself playing with the toys, thought long and hard about which ones I might like best.

But adults—who theoretically are more capable of focusing on the Christ Child, whose birth we celebrate—just can’t seem to carve out the time to savor his coming.

Mostly, that’s because of good and important things. Like jobs, which we appreciate this year more than in years past. And also all the “stuff” of maintaining a family, and keeping up with chores and even going to church and doing churchy stuff. It’s compounded by all the extra time demands of the season—decorating the house and yard, shopping for presents, sending and receiving cards, not to mention all the time we waste fretting and/or mulling over it all.

This year, give yourself a gift: Take time each day—morning or evening, your call—to anticipate again Jesus’ birth. Gather those you love and light Advent candles. Sing carols. Read the Gospel of Luke. Or just sit and stare at the Christmas tree.

Be still, and anticipate the Christ Child.

 


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