The other day when we were taking down our Christmas decorations, I was wondering why I had enjoyed this Christmas season more than others in the recent past and why I was not as eager to put everything away. There may be a number of reasons why, but what immediately came to my mind was surprising: I put out only the things I really love this year, leaving many of my decorations in the basement. I also put only the ornaments that I love on the tree and not all the ones I have had for many years that I hesitated to get rid of, or the ones I always “filled in” with. My husband doesn’t care; he is happy with whatever I want because he simply loves anything we do to make the house look festive. He didn’t care that I gave away some of the old retro ornaments I had kept from the 1950’s along with some others I had gotten tired of through the years.
Another example (or maybe the prime example) of my simplifying this year is that I excluded a nativity scene that I like very much but always dread getting out because it is very heavy, as well as hard to get the figures out of their boxes and put them back up. Here again, my husband is glad to do this for me, but I always feel that I need to help, so this year I left it in the basement. In the past I felt vaguely guilty if I didn’t set the nativity out, considering it is the focal point of the Advent season!
So, this past December, instead of doing what I felt I “should” do, the way things had “always” been done for a long time, I embraced only what I really loved! It was refreshing to drop some things from my list of “duties”, like I had done many years ago when it dawned on me that I didn’t “have” to bake all the varieties of cookies my mother baked when I was growing up. There was no reason why I had to do the same things Mother had done; I could make Christmas simpler and more meaningful to me by leaving behind some of the old traditions. I remember feeling such a sense of freedom after doing this! It actually opened a window for me to celebrate Christmas more deeply for its true meaning (as well as set the stage for one day being able to get rid of Mother’s furniture that she expected me to keep… But that’s a story for another day!).
The same principle is true of dropping some of the traditions in the church to open a refreshing window for the Holy Spirit to move in our midst! Jesus talked about tradition; it was one of the main things, taught and passed on by the leaders of the church, that blocked people from God. If our way is ladened with our own clutter, He will be pushed aside or left out completely, not only at Christmas, but throughout the rest of the year. Instead of going through the motions and then continuing on our own way, He wants us to go His way and do whatever we do purely out of love for Him. He wants us to lay aside everything that hinders our walk with Him and come to Him as little children… This is the essence of true worship as well as the true spirit of Christmas!
Happy New Year!
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