"He knew thereafter how to keep Christmas well." -Charles Dickens from the end of A Christmas Carol.
I'm so silly at Christmas time. I think it's the expectations that lure me in. You want to be in the Christmas Spirit, whatever that is, and as I thought about this more I began to realize that I was making all of this more complicated than it really is. I look back on past Christmas times and I remember wonderful times and magic in the air. And so I think to myself, I want to feel like that I again! How can I recreate? Hmmm...well, I remember when I felt the Christmas Spirit before there was a Christmas tree with lights, I was with my family, there were lots of gifts, and good food, and a lot of other things. Yet somehow with all of these things in place every year, the Christmas Spirit still often proves elusive. Where is it?! Did it run off? In all my recreation I am learning that all these things I put into place every year are either fruit of the Christmas Spirit or decoration for the Christmas Spirit. Here's what I mean. I think the Christmas Spirit is love and that the two are interchangeable. When it comes down to it, you can't simply recreate love by putting things in place. Love has to be real and love has to be a gift.
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed an in truth." 1 John 3:16-18
I really think 1 John is what I need to hear over the holidays as I think about the Christmas Spirit and spend time with those I love. Those words from 1 John are not soft or easy. The Word is a sword and like C.S. Lewis noted in the The Weight of Glory, "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.” The passage from 1 John 3 has the power to break my enchantment.
I just finished watching the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol and probably cried more at the end of it than I have all year. To see Ebenezer Scrooge unhindered, wreckless joy and blessing spilling out onto others at the end of the movie, I find myself laughing with a deep mirth as the tears well up. Something real has happened to Ebenezer. His heart has been transformed and there is love overflowing onto Cratchett and Tiny Tim. It appears he has become a child again.
I want to be one who keeps Christmas well like Scrooge did. This isn't easy though. To have the wells from deep within your heart loosed, a digging has to take place. Wells do not spring forth any other way but by digging. That's what happens as Ebenezer Scrooge encounters the three spirits of Christmas past, present, and future. A gradual digging takes place. After the second spirit, Ebenezer says something to effect of, "I know what I have done and I am sorry but I am too old to change! Find someone younger to redeem who can do some real good." The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come appears and the digging must go deeper. And as Ebenezer see the Cratchetts mourning over Tiny Tim's death, his fortune come to nothing, and as he clings desperately to his gravestone, he finally cries, "I repent. Please let this not be a vision of what must be but what might be." The digging has reached the bottom of his heart and a place has been prepared. It is just as the Spirit of Christmas present said, "The Savior born in Bethlehem does not live in men's heart but one day of the year, but all three hundred and sixty-five." Such a place has been prepared in Ebenezer's heart. He was, in fact, not too old to redeem.
If we were to be visited by the spirits this Christmas, what would the spirits have to show you and me? Sometimes the necessary digging can take place just by stopping to think and ponder on such things and let them have their effect on our hearts.
I love all the wrappings of Christmas. I love having a tree with lights. I love having family to spend time with. I love having lights shining on houses. I love having delicious food. And what I love most about these things is that they are the overflow of the Christmas Spirit. They are the overflow of love. The Christmas Spirit flows out of love. And love was consummated in the gift that God gave in Jesus. It was consummated when he laid down his life for us. It was further consummated when he rose from the dead. As I think about the Christmas Spirit and wanting to experience it once more, I realize that this love will be the overflow from my very own heart. That was part of the gift of Jesus, that his love would be able to live in and overflow out of my very own heart. As I lay down my life to spend time with God, to give of myself for others, and as I think that this love will ultimately consummated as I rise from the dead to be with Jesus, the love of Christ during this time of year is able to flow full freshet out of my heart. And the love of Christ lives out of our very own hearts, not in word and deed, but in truth.
You and I can't recreate love. But you CAN let the Spirits of Christmas visit your heart. The Christmas Spirit isn't very complicated per se though it may take you coming face to face with your gravestone and clinging to it, pleading. When we consider how to deep to go, we should also consider how deep we want our well to be and how much joy we want to overflow from our hearts. Take time to dig deep for the wells of joy and join Ebenezer in wreckless, abandoned, unfettered, raw joy. Let it spill over to others, both friend and stranger, poor and rich alike. God has given us all people in our lives to love this Christmas and thankfully he has not done so without giving us also a well from which to love them.
