Today, I waved goodbye as kids headed south to the university town my brain calls home when I’m asleep. I watched departing taillights as little pieces of my heart buckled into a Ford heading seven hours from here, and my heart sank more than just a little bit. I turned to trudge through a foot of snow toward the house I call home when I’m fully conscious, and right on cue, the rain began to fall. Christmas was officially over.
As planned, I went inside and began the annual task of “dismantling Christmas” and storing it all in neatly labeled boxes. Usually, I treat myself to a new novel on Audible while I do this task. It takes the sting out of the season’s end, and it makes the inevitable hours of work move along more quickly. But this year, I just blinked back the tears that always come when they drive away and got right to work putting ornaments in cartons.
Did we miss it, I wondered? We were all here — well, almost all of us. My third son and his wife celebrated the holiday in the Midwest, hunkered down for their baby’s first Christmas. They moved in the slow, sweet steps of postpartum life, a rhythm of feeding, and sleeping, and waking, and wondering at the miracle changing the cadence of their lives forever. For our part, half a country away, we celebrate text messages and videos and FaceTime phone calls jubilantly reporting every small milestone of development.
Here in the big white farmhouse, we gathered everyone else into bursting bedrooms to celebrate the Christmas season. Here, a single hall bathroom that shares space with the washer and dryer groaned with damp exertion. All the favorite treats were baked, and all the usual kitchen traditions were observed. Brightly wrapped packages towered under the tree; then there was a giant, festive mess in the living room. Movies were watched, carols were sung, puzzles were finished, and toasts were offered. We made our lists and checked off every item.
But did we somehow miss Christmas?
We slide inevitably into Ordinary Time, our days numbered just so. Fresh from the glow of the season of good cheer, everyone makes big, hopeful plans and calls them resolutions. Then, even as the trees appear on curbsides, we push those lofty goals aside and sigh about how nice it is to reclaim the uncluttered open spaces of our homes and how good it is to settle into the everyday routine.
We missed it.
A Baby was born and we went about our merrymaking and then we resumed our “regular lives.”
Here we are in mid-January, settled right back into the customary cadence of common life. We are unchanged by the arrival of the Infant. We will exist this way until Ash Wednesday, which this year falls on Valentine’s Day. Then, we will pause briefly to acknowledge either the beginning of the penitential season or the Hallmark holiday of love (or both), but it is likely that those also will pass and leave us unchanged.
Christmas is supposed to change us. The Infant is supposed to disrupt our lives in the best way forever.We are supposed to fall in love with him and become attached to him, to listen to his every utterance, and marvel at the goodness of him. And then, as the liturgical year unfolds, each “milestone” (if you will) should bring us closer to the reality of God with us.
Did you miss Christmas this year? It’s not too late. Perhaps you could retrieve the nativity set you just put away and give it a more permanent place in your home? Perhaps this is the year you remind yourself daily of the wonder of the birth of Christ and you let the Infant disrupt your life in the best way.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
