Christmas does odd things with time.
After a frantic rush of activity with gift-buying, parties, and performance schedules, time suddenly seems to expand as the last Sunday of Advent draws to a close. The act of lighting that fourth candle seems to be the beginning of this strange effect. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are subsequently disconnected from any day of the week.
This season, Sunday still felt like a normal weekend, and it wasn’t until after that we stretched into Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, though, was not a Monday, nor Christmas Day a Tuesday. It’s as though they stood outside of time, much like the time altering event that we celebrate, when the Word became flesh and a dwelt among us.
Karen and I stayed up until the early morning hours of Christmas Day struggling to assemble the larger gifts, only to be awakened before 7 a.m. by our children bouncing with excitement that could no longer be contained. Over breakfast, I was talking with my parents, who recalled staying up until 4 a.m. one year putting together an elaborate toy with which I still recall playing. I could recall, I told them, a specific set of Christmas mornings: finding Luke Skywalker next to Christmas cookies that “Santa” had eaten from, tearing back wrapping paper to find Optimus Prime, opening the coveted set of sneakers in high school. Those mornings reached through to me from the past, just as real today, intertwining with our children’s joy at princess costumes and toy dinosaurs.
After Christmas, we travelled to spend time with my parents. It’s always surreal to visit that same house in which I grew up. Sometimes the memories take on a life of their own. This year, that wasn’t so much the case. This year it was the past continuing to meld with the present. I sat one afternoon in the quiet of the living room, taking a break from the activity, and I watched our oldest daughter run through the kitchen, grinning ear-to-ear, sliding in her socks around the corner before continuing to charge full-speed into whatever adventure came next until she was out of sight, in much the same way that I used to in that very same kitchen. I experienced so much joy as a child in that house, and thought about how fitting it is that my daughter can now do the same.
I have so many memories of my father working at family through my childhood. I remember him building part of that house as I watched, one my earliest memories. I remember him bringing in wood for the stove in the winters. So many Christmas mornings, so many Christmas gift outings.
Karen and I refer to our Christmas tree as a “memory tree.” We collect ornaments from our travels and life events, and it is with those, as well as ornaments gifted to us, that we decorate our artificial tree each year. Each year, I try to find time to reflect on these, even as we add new ones. There are so many layers to our life together.
Christmas lately seems as much about celebrating the past as the present of our family. Which is fitting, as we are celebrating the Child born to be the Sacrifice for us, who is still with us – through Him, by Him, and for Him. Our relationships, like Him, stand outside of time…eternal, immeasurably more important than any gifts that might be exchanged. While my memories tend to key themselves to certain gifts associated with certain Christmas mornings, it is the bond that I formed with my family on those mornings that surrounds me now, a tangible expression of His love, and what I hope my children remember in their adult lives.
I hope that peace and goodwill followed you this Christmas season.