Key Concept:
God’s intention at Bethlehem was not to put on an ostentatious show at the world’s center stage, but rather to introduce reconciliation to humanity in humanity’s simplest form, a baby.
Simple Focus:
For the mind; intentionally thinking about a simpler, slower-pace holiday
Introduction
How is it with your soul today, dear friend?
Still full from Thanksgiving dinner? Weary from the pandemic that may have kept you from gathering with your loved ones? Anxious about what Christmas will look like this year? Wondering how this Christmas season will bring the hope, joy, love, and peace that we always expect this time of year?
Me too… and with a deep breath I ask again, how is it with your soul?
During this Advent season, the pastors and staff of Arborlawn UMC are inviting you to embrace the beauty and wonder that can be found in “A Simple Christmas.” The story of Jesus begins quite simply; just an infant in a manger with his wide-eyed teenage parents, impossibly unaware of how their lives, and the lives of everyone on earth, just changed forever.
I hope you will open your hearts to the Christ-child this season and that your soul may find rest and peace in this slower paced holiday. Join Pastor Christie and myself each Friday as we prepare our hearts and minds for Sunday’s lesson on “A Simple Christmas.”
With a hopeful heart,
Jenny Spidell
The Controversy of Christmas Decor, by Christie Robbins
The second most controversial question ever asked is: "When is it acceptable to put up your Christmas decorations? When should you take your Christmas decorations down?" (I'm aware those are two questions.) The first most controversial question ever asked is: "Should toilet paper be replaced so it pulls over the roll or under the roll?" I will not answer the toilet paper question. It's hard for y'all who don't agree with me to admit that I am correct.
Growing up, my mom was a strict rule follower when it came to the second most controversial question. Christmas decorations were NEVER to be put up before Thanksgiving. And I mean, EVER. And because we were United Methodists who follow the liturgical calendar AND understand that the Twelve Days of Christmas BEGIN on Christmas day and END on January 5th (Epiphany) we NEVER, and I mean EVER, took our decorations down before Epiphany Sunday had occurred. <Remember, the Twelve Days of Christmas commemorates the time it took for the Wise Men to reach Jesus. In real time the journey was probably about three years, meaning Jesus was a toddler when the Wise reached him and realized this young boy was the long-awaited Messiah.> To take down your decorations prior to Epiphany Sunday was to give into the commercialization of Christmas and in some way allow the real meaning to erode.
I stuck to this schedule even into my forties. I send my best friend from college (also named Cristi) a text on December 26 reminding her to keep her decorations up, and without fail, every year she sends me a picture of her bleak house sans decor. She works so fast, that one! But because I love her, and we've been friends FOREVER, and she has blackmail pictures of me from our college days, I let it slide that she doesn't observe proper Christmas decorating protocols.
And then, a few years ago, I went to my parent's house before Epiphany to find ALL THE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS had been taken down and put away. I had to question my entire upbringing and even my own existence here on earth. I experienced a groundbreaking revelation that I barely even knew the people who raised me. They had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with clones.
In October of this year, during a facebook scroll, you can imagine my level of disgust when people on my facebook feed proudly began taking pictures of their Christmas decorations. I try not to comment on controversial topics, so I had to stop my fingers from writing, "What about THANKSGIVING?" I sat smug, all alone, in judgement of other people's poor life choices.
At some point this fall, the Holy Spirit hit me upside the head. For some of y'all, the Holy Spirit is nice and gentle because you heed more regularly the voice of God. Not me. The Holy Spirit has to come at me like a spider monkey. As I rubbed my wounded head, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said: "2020 is hard enough, why you gotta be so judgy, Christie? If people want a little bit of joy in their lives, if they want a little bit of Jesus with their Thanksgiving <or Halloween>, why should you care?" Convicted by the Spirit, I realized if y'all put your Christmas decorations up in October in the midst of a global pandemic so you have a little bit of joy in your life, who am I to judge?
So, here I am, just a girl standing in front of her church family, asking you to forgive me. Forgive me for trying to overfunction in y'all's lives by dictating when you put up and take down your Christmas decor. It's 2020: you do you, baby. I will ask you type A personalities like my friend Cristi to look the other way when I leave my Christmas decorations up until February. Not judging works both ways.
In the gospel of John chapter 8 verse 12 Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Maybe putting up Christmas early in 2020 is simply an acknowledgement that the light of the world, the Incarnate of Hope, will come again. We will not always be in the dumpster fire of 2020. A brighter light will pull us through. So, dear friends in Christ: find and display the light of Christ however, whenever, and wherever you are able, all year long. I won't judge.
Unless you put your toilet paper in the holder so that you pull from the top of the roll instead of under. That's just wrong.