Waking up dreaming
Joseph turned around wide-eyed
Behold, it’s Christmas
My wife was not feeling well the other day, so to be safe, she tested for COVID. While we waited for the results, negative thoughts filled our minds.
We’d prepared for a small family gathering, less than ten, for Christmas. We were already sad that our daughter in New York City wouldn’t be home because of the danger COVID poses. Imagining a Christmas without even a small family gathering was depressing. Could this COVID Christmas still be Christmas?
Thankfully, Lori tested negative; all was well.
But who knows, anyone of us could get COVID during the holidays. And sadly, there are thousands of empty chairs at Christmas tables this year because of the devasting effects of the pandemic.
These past nine months have been brutal on us, and Christmas will not be the same. Some, like the Prime Minister of England, have called it off altogether. In light of a new strain of COVID, he announced: “Given the early evidence we have… it is with a heavy heart I must tell you we cannot continue with Christmas as planned.”
I think of Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) blurting out in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: “I don’t know what to say, except it’s Christmas, and we’re all in misery.”
But maybe we can find courage, strength, and hope by looking at how Joseph experienced the first Christmas, despite all the negativity surrounding his life. Joseph, you remember, was the foster father of Jesus and the husband of Mary. While being a descendant of the illustrious King David, Joseph was a carpenter, a skilled laborer, but certainly not a person of wealth and means. He walked off the pages of history after he brought Jesus and Mary back from Egypt to their home in Nazareth. Yet, because of his humility, he played an instrumental role in the first Christmas.
Joseph was willing to place his feelings of betrayal, hurt, and self-concern to the side for the birth of the Christ child, getting out of the way for Christmas. He must have felt isolated and alone, what with the prospect of having to explain the unexpected pregnancy of his betrothed as being “by the Holy Spirit.” His family and peers likely smirked, raised their eyebrows, and shook their heads in disbelief.
But Joseph had that rare combination of being righteous and kind. And because he obeyed the commands of the angel, he experienced the first Christmas.
This Christmas will be different, for sure. It’s probably not what most of us wanted. But like Joseph, for the Christ of Christmas to live in our hearts, we too must humble ourselves, displacing our SELF, relinquishing the illusion that we control the show.
Perhaps we can view this COVID Christmas as a one-time opportunity to embrace the quiet, the solitude, as we ponder the true meaning of Christmas.
I’ve already missed the cantata at church this year. We won’t have the candlelight Christmas Eve service like we used to have. And without all our family being together, Christmas won’t be the same.
But it might give me pause to think about that first Christmas, how Mary and Joseph must have felt the fear of not knowing how they would make it. The aloneness was surely hanging heavy in the air. I wonder if they yearned for the normalcy of that idyllic family, with their first child being born at a more socially acceptable time after they had celebrated the marriage with the festive wedding of their dreams. Instead, they were stranded in Bethlehem, away in a manger with cows instead of in a cozy home with family and friends. And they had no certainty of what life would be like once they returned home.
That was the first Christmas.
Maybe this COVID Christmas is closer to that first Christmas than we thought. The good news this COVID Christmas is that despite what may be missing, everything changes when Christ is birthed in your life. All things are new, eternally different—and full of hope.
As frightful as that might appear, that’s when it is, in fact, Christmas.