Sunday, December 26, 2010

Can Christmas be over?

Reading Facebook this morning, I smiled to myself as I read some status updates.  They varied from "Look what I got!" to "Christmas is over :(".  On a couple, I took the time to comment that Christmas isn't over--Christ is born! Christmas is remembering His birth, so when we say Christmas is "over" there is a finality to it.  A door shuts in our hearts and minds, and we, being human, start looking for the next thing.

One way to understand this concept is to look at the liturgical calendar. The liturgical calendar is the way that the Church (the GLOBAL body of Christians) ecumenically remembers the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.  With the remembrance of the birth of Christ during Christmas, we are led to the celebration of the Epiphany, and then we prepare to enter the season of Lent. Depending upon your denomination affiliation, you may have never experienced or participated in the season of Lent, however I strongly encourage you  to seek to enter into the forty days that precede the celebration of Easter. That is another long-winded tangent that I won't go into today. :)

My point today, the day after Christmas Day, is that Christmas is not a doorway that opens and shuts once the gifts have been opened, and the lights taken down.  It is the open-ended path that began with Advent (our preparation to receive Christ anew in our hearts again and look forward to his return) and leads us dynamically forward throughout the year towards Easter.  There is a song that I love by Bebo Norman, "Born to Die".  Music is a powerful messenger, and this song is a helpful reminder to me that when we celebrate the joyful birth of Christ, it is always foreshadowing the humiliation of the Cross. 


So do you think Christmas is over?

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