Joy of the season can’t be diminished by dark times
“He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming. It CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same.”
— “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”
Christmastime is here. Despite months of hyperpartisan politics and angry street protests and even a global pandemic — somehow or other, it came just the same.
Santa may be harder to spot this year — from 6 feet away, wearing a mask and standing behind a plexiglass barrier — but he’s here. This is still his big day, as evidenced by the earlymorning squeals of delight from millions of children across the land.
If you were lucky, you were on the front lines this morning to see Christmas conquer COVID gloom firsthand, with wrapping paper flying from the frenzied fingers of excited children. Vaccines may hold the coronavirus at bay, but you know what kills its stranglehold on our psyche?
Joy.
This has been an utterly joyless year. It’s hard to remember because there’s been so much tragedy since, but the helicopter crash that killed basketball great Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, happened in January. The planet may be experiencing global warming, but 2020 has been a cold, bitter, bleak slog — like Narnia in the thrall of the evil White Witch, where it was “always winter but never Christmas.”
Except … it is Christmas. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe a Christmas where the closest you can get to the people you love is a Zoom screen or a phone call just isn’t the same. It’s true: For many of us this will likely be our Worst. Christmas. Ever.
And yet it’s still here. Or it can be, if you let it.
My Christmas came from neighbors, one who brought beautiful (and delicious) snowflake Christmas cookies and another who brought spicy homemade salsa. They may have been left on a porch instead of under a tree, and announced by a doorbell ring, not carolers singing “Jingle Bells,” but they were there. Simple acts of generosity, a message that while
we are isolated, we’re not alone.
They came just the same. You might not be so lucky. Maybe your neigh
bors might not know how to cook. In fact, there’s a good chance they don’t even know your name. Does that mean there is no
Christmas for you?
Nonsense. It just means that you get to bring the Christmas. You get to be the one who celebrates the season by kicking COVID gloom in the teeth.
Fire up the oven, or put a bow on a bottle of wine. Or just mask up, knock on that unknown neighbor’s door and say, “My name is _____, and I’m here to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
Because, like the vaccine we’ve pinned so many hopes upon, Christmas doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just appear. It needs an Operation Warp Speed of its own, and you can be a part of it.
Remember what they said about Scrooge after his night of terror with the three spirits? “And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well.”
Christmas must be kept. Kept on display in our homes. Kept alive in our hearts. If we can keep the message of Christmas alive — that when we are at our worst, those who love us are prepared to give us their best — then every year we can be both expectant and surprised when we say:
Christmastime is here. It came, just the same.