Hobby Lobby’s Christmas marketing campaign has been using the phrase” Christmas is what you make it” for a number of years. Advertisements depict hot and heart-tugging stories of people, in one way or another, sharing some Christmas happiness with someone else:  ,
An older, happily married pair observes two youthful, lonely singles who need a little help to get to know each other in the preceding business, which I must admit made my stomach hurt. The older partners takes necessary actions. The young couple meets and decorates a tree together ( with Hobby Lobby decorations, of course! ). What’s not to like?
The issue is that the overall concept is incorrect. Coming from a business known for its Christian rights, its abundance of Holy product, and its process of not being available on Sunday, this is amazing. The truth is that Christmas is not what you create. You have no control over what you do with it. Bless God.
Christmas Falls
Although it appears that holiday pressure causes the death rate to rise, it is not a myth that it does. Some of that stress may be due to the demands of the year itself: There is searching to perform, gifts to cover, parties and events to enter, cleaning, cooking, and pressure to have a picture-perfect Hallmark-worthy celebration. For those who don’t have someone to share” the most beautiful time of the year” with, loneliness may become a source of additional stress. The precise shadows of the time, which causes some people to experience seasonal affective disorder, is another source of stress.
So to contribute, on top of an already demanding moment, the pressure to “make” Christmas into anything at all, as if Christmas needs you in order to arise, misses the whole place. It’s the same training that Charles Schulz and Dr. Seuss both attempted to impart to us.
Christ Came
Many Christians, during the month of December, seek not to let Christmas, specially all its liberal niceties, crowd out the religious period that comes right before it: Advent. Advent is a time of planning and forgiveness, of anticipating the arrival of the new King, the One who was created to redeem the earth from its crimes.
That little girl, Jesus Christ, did increase up to expire on a combination and rise on the next day to claim victory over sin, death, and the devil. All who are in Him communicate, by kindness, in that same success. He did come back to state his own in the future. Advent, at the same time that it recalls Christ’s first coming in the body, also looks forward to His last coming, when the items we now see only dimly, as in a camera, will be vibrantly evident as we see our Lord face to face.  ,
It’s not up to us, but what Charlie Brown learns as he searches for the true meaning of Christmas and what the Grinch learns once he realizes he can’t stop it is the same lesson we need to learn. We can’t make Christmas happen. We can’t make it better. To think that, by our feeble efforts, we can make it more meaningful is the height of arrogance, not to mention a prescription for deep disappointment. We and anything we do do have no control over what the meaning of Christmas is. Only in Christ and what He did is that.
Be at Peace
I am not trying to hate on a sweet commercial. The message of caring for others, which we hear so much at this time of year, is a worthwhile one. We should listen and try to carry it through December, into the new year, and beyond.
But if you are struggling right now — with rejection, loneliness, or illness, with fears about the future or dreams unrealized, with the effects of natural disasters or the pain of losing a loved one, with unemployment, financial pressures, addiction, or something else — you don’t have to do anything to make Christmas happen. Christmas doesn’t depend on who you are. Christmas happened, and happens again in our yearly observance, only because of a gracious God who had a plan, from the beginning of time, to save the creation He loves.
” And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” ( John 1: 14 ).  ,
Merry Christmas!
