EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2021 I began a new venture writing a newspaper column titled "Finding Faith" for the Forum Communications Co. network of newspapers and websites. I was asked to contribute to the company's ongoing conversation about faith, lending a Lutheran and fairly ecumenical approach to the discussion. The column was published in several of the company's papers and websites, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. This column originally appeared as a "Finding Faith" column on Dec. 23, 2022.
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
“So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun”
I think a great many people can relate to the haunting words in the opening stanza of John Lennon’s beautiful anthem “Happy Xmas (War is Over).”
We are told that Christmas is a joyous and gay occasion, deserving of our good cheer. Yet for a multitude of factors, so many of us just find ourselves anxious or overwrought or just simply sad during Christmas.
Numerous people this past week have shared with me that they just can’t find the Christmas mood. They say it in hushed tones, and in private conversations, as if they are villains to admit their lack of Christmas joy. And, if we are honest, we do punish those who bring us down during the holidays.
The problem is that we’ve made Christmas out to be too much. We’ve overcomplicated it. There is so much pressure to increasingly overspend on gifts we don’t need, and frankly many of the recipients won’t like. We are expected to attend the work holiday party, the kids’ Sunday school program, and the family extravaganza that leaves us more exhausted than fills us up. We pack our already normally busy schedules with even more.
And then there are the unrealistic expectations about the joy we are supposed to feel. We are to simply get over lost loved ones and forget the many millions of people suffering around the world and ignore the everyday sadness over just scraping by.
Just grab a cup of eggnog; thank you for another sweater I didn’t need; let’s sing some Christmas carols. My, aren’t those lights pretty!
Of course, there is nothing wrong with the joy some feel during Christmas. Some are genuinely gripped by the Holy Spirit who transforms the season for them and lifts them to joyous highs!
But for many of us -- yes, even pastors -- Christmas seems to be more about the madness of rushing and consumerism and superficial generosity. We ache over the fact that Christ’s birth, something so beautiful in its simplicity, has been hijacked by the human need to fill some void in our life.
There is nothing as humans that we can do to better the Christmas story. Period.
The Christ child, God incarnate, comes to earth in the most humblest of ways to share our earthly life for a short while and teach us a better way to live.
This is the Christmas story, and it is enough. The rest is just human trappings.
Merry Christmas to every single one of us! Christ is born! Hallelujah!
Devlyn Brooks is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and serves Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He also works for Forum Communications Co. He can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com for comments and story ideas.
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