Getting All "Wrapped" Up

I want to write a brief blog on this Christmas season, 2010.

Christmas is such a pressured season: everyone running around to buy things, so many at the last minute and without thought or care just so someone can "have something" under the tree. We run around to attend parties and banquets and shindigs and try to come up with something for the last minute gift exchanges at work. We get so "wrapped" up in the stresses that it brings that we tend to lose sight of actually enjoying it.

Since, as adults, we are the owners of the house, the leaders of the family, it's our job to buy the gifts, to wrap them, to make sure all is set for Christmas morning. We are not allowed to care about how we feel during Christmas nor are we able to stop and enjoy the sights because we are tying a little one's scarf or wiping a runny nose or preparing dinner inside for the family.

But as Christmas has snuck up on us this year I've been thinking, what really is Christmas? I mean, I know what it is. But really, what is it? Are we supposed to feel stressed and tired and drained and poor? I surely hope not.

I watch people and I wonder how I am acting around the holidays compared to them. Do I seem stressed, am I worried, amd I trying too hard? And most of the time the answer is yes.

I have to stop and wonder why. If Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and the gift of salvation He brought with it, does anybody really ever have anything other gifts they need to give or receive? I would venture to say not.

But even though all these things are true we, as a society, like to give gifts and make people happy and pretend there is a Santa Claus and put up winter decor. Oh yes, we do. And I do, too. Christmas is a time when families gather together and relax and cook and enjoy the lights. It's a time for all to feel warm and needed. It's a great feeling and I wish we could have them more often.

As I drive to work each morning (I do a lot of thinking during this time, you see) I ponder a lot on why Christmas makes me so stressed and why people feel the need to get all "wrapped" up in the mundane-ness of it all. And as I ponder I remember a song on the radio I heard the other day called "Christmas Like a Child" by Casting Crowns. It's a simple song about living Christmas like children would.

I have become a little irritated, I must admit, about Christmas. It is so commercialized and there is barely any time to enjoy it before they are planning for Valentine's Day. So, I decided this year I'm taking a different approach. I'm going to enjoy Christmas like a child. I'm going to be excited about the Christmas trees and lights I see, the candles burning, the smells of cinnamon and sugar and spice scent around the air, and be wide-eyed, eager and fascinated at the whimsical dreamland around me because that is what a child would do. And...it helps me not be stressed. Why can't I be a child, too? Who says there's a rule and that I'm supposed to be bitter and angry and grinchy in my adult years. I plan to breathe it and feel it and take it all in just like a five-year-old would. And you should too!