The Christmas boxes are all carefully packed and tucked away
until next November. Every year, I fight a little anxiety as
I pack them away. "If I'm not here next year, will they know
how to find everything? Will they remember where it all goes?
Will they be able to make Christmas?" Of course, this anxiety
has its root in the fact that I finished treatment for cancer
just as the Christmas season closed 24 years ago. Even if
it's not conscious, my mind goes there, always will go there,
it seems.
The reality, to be clear, is that I don't make Christmas at
all. Christmas is entirely the Lord's. But I consciously do
bring its presence into our home. And then, when it is safely
packed away, I set about intentionally to continue to make
the Baby Jesus a part of our ordinary days.
The last of the pine needles are swept, the last ornament
tucked away, the bright red boxed up and we are tidy and
clean and a little bare. Honestly, I don't miss the red and
green - they clash terribly with the walls and the furniture.
I do, however, want to nest and to brighten the winter days
after the feast. Inevitably, I buy flowers those first few
weeks in January. It's an instinct built into my motherhood.
"To a young child, home stands for God. In it he learns to
see and touch the gifts of God. If his mother is wise, she
will make his home beautiful. She will copy the world's
Creator and make a tiny new Eden. She will bring in flowers
and give the child animals and feed the birds. The food on
the table will be clean and simple and good. It will not only
taste nice, it will look nice. From all this the child will
learn naturally that God did not make the hideous travesty
that we have made of created things," (Caryll Houselander,
The Mother of Christ).
Sometimes I wonder if the effort is worth it. I woke up this
morning thinking about home and about all the ways I try to
put into this home the things I wanted from home as child.
There is magazine cover beautiful and there is "tiny new
Eden" beautiful. In a home that is tiny new Eden beautiful,
there is always a soft place to land. There are flowers, to
be sure, but more importantly, there is the invitation to
inhale their fragrance - there is the welcome and the urging
to be a part of the beautiful, to take comfort in it, to
enjoy one another amidst it. The effort we put into making
things beautiful at home is only as valuable as the effort we
put into making people truly feel welcome there and genuinely
loved amidst the beauty. Hospitality is ours to extend from
the moment our feet touch the floor in the morning. Is our
family truly welcome in the home we create and in the spaces
of our lives?
There is a point in beauty, Lord. You, the most extraordinary
artist, made things beautiful. This is not the stuff of
Pinterest competitions. This is the endeavor to let the
Artist Creator live and breathe in me. Do not allow me to
make a travesty of my household. Instead, help me to bring
beauty from the resources You provide.
Foss, whose website is elizabethfoss.com, is a freelance
writer from Northern Virginia.