"Happy Holidays" and other major letdowns

"Tis the season to be jolly......"

You would think so. Everything around us tells us that this is the time to be jolly and merry. Clerks in department stores wish us the generic "happy holidays" with each purchase, displaying a fake smile underneath their tired eyes from long hours, frustrated customers and hours of listening to Jingle Bell Rock played over the loudspeaker of the store. While touted as the"time of giving", more and more places try to offer bribes for your business with deals like "Buy a $30 gift card for them and get a $5 gift card for you!". Yes, playing to our selfish nature in the materialistic world we live in is a great method for drumming up more sales.

Besides the great buying frenzy, many find the holidays exhausting physically and emotionally. For the single, the emptiness of relationships seems ever more real as they travel from activity to activity, alone. For the widowed or grieving or empty nester, the holidays can open old wounds and highlight how this year is different, because not everyone who made the holiday season so special is there anymore. For the unemployed and underemployed, the season can remind you of everything you don't have and can't get for your loved ones. For the very wealthy, the holidays are especially anticlimactic, because all the money in the world can't fill that whole that nags at your heart. Or maybe you're the child learning Santa isn't true. Or you are some other religion, feeling assaulted by holiday greetings everywhere you go, for holidays you don't celebrate. Yes, "happy holidays" can be a major letdown for young and old.

And yet, Christmas is the most joyful time of all. Not the materialistic, secular, generality of "holiday wishes", Christmas is the true heralding of comfort and joy. For believers, it is a reminder of God's great love for us and our identity in Him. We are His people, saved through His Son, to be reunited in His glorious kingdom. The examples above are just a small sample of people trying to establish identity in worldly, temporary things like our beauty, riches, family or lovers. Every one of those things leaves a whole inside that no gift card or fancy bow can fill. The hole we have inside is exactly Jesus sized and nothing else will do. Psalm 48 paints a beautiful picture of worshiping God, Lord of all. But not only because He is our Creator and all-powerful and worthy of praise. The psalmist ends with the reason for joyful worship - because He is our God (vs14). And we are His people.

For believers, we are urged in 1 Peter to not conform to our former lusts which were ours in ignorance, but rather to live like the Holy One who called us. (1 Peter 1:14) We don't have to live like everyone else, hurried, exhausted and yet somehow disappointed by it all. Christmas is joyful because we were called out of darkness into light (Isaiah 9:2) and given good news of great joy (Luke 2:10). We are a blessed people because no longer do we have to be enslaved to our former passions and identities that left us broken and empty - we are not controlled by money, sex, power, family, materialism, or any other false sense of security celebrated by "happy holidays". No, we were called to have a "Merry Christmas", rooted in our identity in Him who loves us and called us to make use His own. John's gospel says "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor by the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13)

Have you lost someone recently or is your house a little less full this Christmas - take heart, you are part of the body of Christ. You are in His family and you are loved.
Are you alone this Christmas or lonely, even when others are around - be of good cheer, because the Holy Spirit dwells within you and you are never alone.
Is your bank account not looking up to the task of meeting expectations for this season of giving - rejoice, because you have the greatest gift of all and you can share Him with everyone you meet.

It's not that God isn't sympathetic to our sense loss, grief, loneliness or even frustration over material things. He was born in a stable, raised in poverty and died alone on a cross. He knows every frustration this world can bring because He experienced them all. And yet, He does ask us to hold those emotions up to the light of His love. These times are temporary, but we have been loved with and everlasting love and will live with Him eternally in a kingdom paved with gold. No new sweater or even I-phone can compare with that.

Trying to have a happy holiday will only leave you empty. But having a Merry Christmas will give you great cause to rejoice!