Reflecting on Mixed Messages at Christmas

Christmas is a mixed message time of year for me.

My mother’s death at Christmas punched most of the cheerful emotion out of the holiday for many years.

Being the mother also can strip away the excitement as I work in the background to provide Christmas “magic.”

But it hasn’t always been so. Every year, I reach back into my memory pocket.

I remember the fledgling Christmas I first understood the significance of Jesus’ birth.

Maybe it’s the (relatively) frosty night from that long ago Southern California Christmas, when a touch of mist in the air mingled with Christmas hymns I’d never sung before, that’s needed to conjure up the wonder.

The dark sky sparkled with shiny stars that night. I could imagine shepherds startled out of sheep-watching by a glorious choir of angels announcing astonishing news.

Astonishing news, I, too, had only begun to grasp.

A secular childhood full of mixed messages

I’d grown up in a mostly secular household. Christmas was stockings, gaily wrapped gifts, and a trip to our grandparents’ house.

The Italian side of the family ate towering bowls of pasta and ate chocolate pie.

We played a gift swapping game and admired my cousins’ presents. The adults played poker after the dishes were done and we kids ran around outside. Sometimes we even ate outside if it was warm enough.

I don’t remember ever attending church on Christmas day.

But that fifteenth Christmas, I’d met a group of Christians at Trinity Lutheran Church around the corner. They introduced me to the person of Jesus Christ–not only as a baby long ago born.

He died as the Savior of the world who still lived, seated on God‘s right hand.

Like many Americans, I was familiar enough with Jesus. I’d attended catechism for many years.

But, somehow, I never connected the two. I’d never heard of Jesus as the connector between me and the God who created those stars and spun the planets across the universe.

While I had tried to reach him, to understand God, Jesus never held the front of my consciousness.

It changed that Christmas.

The mixed messages of my childhood disappeared into the truth of Jesus.

Some of it was the music: Handel‘s Messiah, four-part harmony hymns, Oh Come, oh Come, Emmanuel,  Gloria in Excelsis Deo, the reading of Luke’s gospel.

Much of it had to do with my own reading of the Bible–the person of Jesus and his role on earth became more clear.

I didn’t remember ever hearing the story of Herod sending soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem as a way of suppressing God’s plan.

Jesus looked completely different that Christmas, and something came alive in my heart and soul.

I’ve always loved the ditty, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” There’s no point to all of this without him.

Yes, I still feel mixed messages at Christmas mourning my mother each year.

But the reason for the season, Jesus, is also the comfort for that loss. His birth in that manger saved the world–and me.

Gloria in excelsis Deo–Glory to God in the highest!

Merry Christmas