Hush of the holy

"I'm actually just looking forward to January."

My friend says this frankly with a smile of weariness. It's only December 8 and the Christmas pressure is just too much. I find myself nodding in understanding.

The Christmas festivities that are meant to be fun pile together into this suffocating to-do list that seems to take on a life of its own, shadowing us with this malevolent promise: if you don't get this list done, your Christmas is a failure. Gifts to shop for and wrap and mail, cards to send, food to make. Parties to plan for and attend, concerts to enjoy, trips to go on, decorations to put up. And in the midst, regular life barrels along at its regular breakneck pace.

And yet we continue, year after year, to plunge into the Christmas craziness. Why? What is it that compels us to create such chaos of our world?

What does it all mean?

A good question.

I love the Christmas chaos, actually. And when I think of why, I see there is this hush beneath it all, this place of wonder and joy.

The hush of the holy.

Advent is a time when the barriers of time and place grow thin. God comes near, we feel His breath, and we touch a little piece of eternity.

That baby in a manger. That virgin mother. Those shepherds standing bewildered beneath a chorus of angels. Wise men traveling across years and continents to worship a tiny child.

God is with us. These things speak of hope and miracles. They remind us of the love that made this world and came among us to rescue it. And for a little while, we slow and we still, and we enter the holy.

Except when we don't.

When the celebrations replace the Child, the holy becomes hectic.

When we stress instead of still, we miss the story.

There is a reason every child loves Christmastime and a reason we want our children to love it. For a little while life becomes less ordinary, and we create reasons to celebrate and be together. We sing special songs. We surround ourselves with meaningful objects and memory-filled traditions. We tell stories in whispers, stay up late, eat more. 

We want a reason to rejoice. 

I think the specialness, the set-apartness, of this time is good and freeing and meaningful. But what is really important during Advent? In the end, what will stay with us? What do I want to remember? What do I want my children to remember?

I want to enter the holy. I want His gift to be the only gift that matters.

I doubt the weariness will go away. I know the chaos will clamor to consume us. But we can choose not to let it. We can choose to let these things usher us to the Christ child, and we can let go of the things that don't.

Slow.

Still.

Enter the holy.