Christmas Season, December 7, 2011 Daily Reflection

Christmas Float

Does your Christmas season already feel like this picture; speeding by in a blurred but pretty flash of light? Christmas season…are you serious…where did October go so quickly? But here we are after Thanksgiving, it is all ON! Time to start that Christmas race…put up the lights, hunt down the decorations, plan the parties, school programs, bake the cookies, make an appointment for Christmas Pictures, plan the shopping days, and find just the right tree.

What happened to the slower pace, the simple memories of Christmas past? Gone are the days of waiting anxiously for Christmas as a child, hanging a stocking, putting out a wreath and waiting by the fireplace to take a peek at Santa. Now we have 25 days of Christmas movies and cartoons, 30 days of Christmas shopping, 50 days of Christmas music playing on the radio, 20 shoppers sprayed with pepper spray on Black Friday and every Tom, Dick and Harry in it to make a buck off of Christmas.

Is this how you really want your Christmas to unfold full of stress, exhaustion and anxiety? Is it possible to change it? Is it possible to go against the grain of the great American dollar and simplify your Christmas?

It is possible but it takes effort. First you have to decide what Christmas is really about commercialism, materialism, profit and gain or God becoming flesh and being born to a 15 year old virgin and a lowly carpenter in the silence of the night, laid in food troth for animals. Is it about the most precious gift ever given to the human race to teach us unconditional love or is it about how many light bulbs you can fit onto your house?

Celebrate Christmas, partake in family traditions, give meaningful and sincere gifts, visit family and friends and your Church this Christmas. Simplify by deciding what you believe and hold true as your own Christmas values.  This day decide what you believe and celebrate your Christmas honestly this year.

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