Why Do I Find the Holidays Depressing?

I had the best neighbors as a young boy!  One neighbor boy was my age.  We were best friends.  We would spend every waking moment together.  His father often would take us fishing in the summer.  His mother made the best cookies in town.  We spent most of our days enjoying the outdoors, unless it rained or grew too cold.  Then it was “game time” at each other’s homes.

Until the holiday season came.  Then, his mother demanded that we not spend so much time together, especially at his home.  You see, Christmas for her was a very depressing, overwhelming time of year.  And why?  From November on, she prepared to “do Christmas.”  Not “celebrate Christmas.” Do Christmas!

Christmas was the main event of the year at her home.  Her Christmas parties were legendary.  She was ordinarily fairly tolerant.  But at Christmas, she became a woman possessed!  Guests crowded into her home almost around the clock in December.  Her yard and home had to be decorated perfectly.  She baked around the clock.  And when she wasn’t baking, she was shopping, wrapping, and gifting everyone she knew.

In that house, Christmas was not meant to be enjoyed.  It certainly was never for pondering and reflecting.  It was an obligation to be met, a problem to be solved, and it became an ordeal to be endured.  She “did Christmas.”  And in the process, it did her in.

I pray you aren’t “doing” it, too!  I hope you are not running yourself ragged and spending yourself into poverty in a misguided attempt to make Christmas “special.”  Not only will that ruin your holiday.  It is totally unnecessary. Even worse, it grieves the Savior whose birthday we are remembering.

Christmas, regardless of what we do or don’t do, is special already! 

That’s because Christmas is about what God did.  It remembers the kindest, most loving, most unselfish thing anyone has ever done:  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16).  It astonishes us with the greatest mystery ever revealed:  “The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).  And it invites us, not to bury ourselves in stress, commotion, and unpaid bills, but to relax and enjoy God’s gifts to us in Christ: “peace on earth, good will to men” (Luke 2:14).

Please, enjoy your holiday!  But don’t “do Christmas!”  Stop!  Come and listen, once again, to the story of Jesus’ birth.  Reflect.  Take your time!  And let God’s Word “do Christmas” to you!

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