[title subtitle=”words and image: Jessica Sowards”][/title]
I am a Christmas person. You know the type. I listen to my James Taylor at Christmas album on October 1 every year. For me, planning and preparation and anticipation for the holiday season starts long before the décor hits the store shelves. And the décor hits the store shelves earlier each year. It hasn’t caught up with me yet.
See, I come by it honestly. I was born nine days before Christmas. I was brought home from the hospital in a giant stocking supplied in the place of the usual medical-grade baby blanket. My parents, first-timers at the baby game, knew no lullabies so they sang me “Silent Night” instead.
Christmas is in my bones.
Of course, Christmas is magical for kids, but I recall mine with an extra dose of whimsy. We were poor, but I never noticed. Somehow, the things we wanted most were always under the tree. Our huge extended family would meet at my grandparents’ house. We ate the same breakfast every year. There were gifts and games and Christmas Eve church services. We would sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus.
And then there was my grandmother. She carried Christmas on her shoulders. Even now, decades later, I can close my eyes and recall the smell of her home each December. I can remember the anticipation, feel the sense of wonder I felt as we sprinkled reindeer food on the front lawn before going to bed on Christmas Eve. I even remember one year being certain I’d heard sleigh bells.
As my peers entered middle school and became more preoccupied with their own wish lists, I spent every resource I had striving to maintain the magic. I was the Oprah Winfrey of the seventh grade, handing out dollar store body sprays to every girl I thought might not otherwise get a gift from a classmate. In high school, I could be found shopping at Cracker Barrel alongside women forty-five years my senior, buying Christmas sweaters before Christmas sweaters were cool.
Getting married taught a hard lesson about how high my expectations were. I learned how exceptional my family had been at Christmastime. Traditions were concrete in my childhood, but as a young wife and mother, I realized that traditions like that take commitment. They require someone who cares.
I tried so hard in the following years. We began having Christmases at our home, my desire to strike out on my own coupled with an immense pressure to recreate my rich memories. I bought. I baked. I begged God to give me back the Christmas of my childhood. No matter what I did though, it was lacking. At the end of the day, when the paper was bagged up and the packages laid bare, I felt like a deflated balloon, surrounded by debt and a feeling of not having done enough.
Then in 2008, just like that, my grandmother died. It was the end of November. One week she seemed fine, the next week they had found cancer, and a week after that I stood by her hospice bed staring down at her wasted body thinking, How can Christmas carry on without her?
I didn’t think it could.
There were poinsettias at her funeral. Of course, it was December. The most wonderful time of the year. That was the last holiday season with her, or at least with her fresh on my memory. That was the year that I decided I would be just like her. I hadn’t figured it out yet, but I was determined to learn the secret of making Christmas magical again.
It took a long while. Christmases passed in mediocrity. I remember the moment it came back to me. We had just moved into a new house and I was very largely pregnant with my third son. I didn’t put the tree up until after my birthday. Nothing was perfect. Everything was still packed in boxes.
I was sitting at the end of the couch with a mug of cider. An apple slice with cloves poking through the skin was floating on top. The glow of the lights on the tree was as warm as the ceramic against my hands. Then my unborn son moved. It wasn’t the first time. I was seven months along and had been daily assaulted by elbows and feet for many weeks. But in that moment, in that light, in that imperfection, I realized.
Mary did this.
This is how Christmas started. With a mother. She did not try to perform and create and manufacture some miraculous experience. She was just a woman who said, “Ok, God. I’ll love your son,” and in a barn, wonder was born.
All this time, I had been searching for the key to creating a celebration with family that encompassed generosity, tradition and festive magic. But I’d been missing the whole point. Jesus. My grandmother knew. Because she had carried six children. She had lost loved ones. And most of all, she had fallen in love with Christ.
You see, we celebrate with generosity because God was so generous to give us His Son. We celebrate with family because in all of the countless ways He could have sent us a savior, He sent Jesus to be raised by a man and a woman who didn’t have all the answers. We celebrate with gladness because our hearts are full. We have been given salvation!
And it’s ok that our holidays are imperfect. It’s ok when they are bittersweet and we cry in front of the tree for those who aren’t with us. It’s ok when there are disappointments. When I realize this, when I weigh the heaviness of my own losses and the anticipation I have felt for each of my children, I can’t help but wonder how Mary felt that first Christmas Eve. This ordinary woman, who felt the Son of God roll under her skin, knowing who He was and how hard He would be to let go of. Salvation was an unimaginably costly gift. Perfect in spite of a world of imperfection.
Christmas is different now. Our budget is modest, much like my childhood. Of course, the kids don’t even notice. Traditions from the past have carried over and married with new experiences and ideas. There is always a ton of family. We eat the same breakfast every year. We serve God, sometimes outwardly and sometimes doing random acts of kindness in secret. And my house has this smell in December. It’s cinnamon and clove and oranges, with a hint of vanilla and rosemary, fresh cookies and cider simmering on the stove. I can’t be sure, because I can’t ask her, but I’m almost certain it’s the same mix of things that scented my grandmother’s home all those years ago.
I finally learned how to carry Christmas. I look at each of my sons as we go through the preparations. I see their excitement and joy and I can see the boy Jesus in each of them. I think of His mother, and how she was just a girl like me, attempting to follow God and answer His call.
It’s because of this that I know, I don’t carry Christmas on my shoulders. I carry it in my heart.
I am a Christmas person. 365 days a year. It’s in my bones.
