O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ:
The Nativity of our Lord: Christmas Day, page 212, BCP
You don’t need me to tell you Christmas is going to be very different this year. Having spent decades serving as emcee at all three Christmas Eve services I find it difficult to think about Christmas at this point because it’s so easy to slip into a negative feedback loop of all that will be missing from this year’s celebration of the birth of the Christ child. At the same time, I’m acutely aware that those of us who are only mourning what, rather than who, will be missing this Christmas are the lucky ones. Christmas is a time that has always been hard for some people, while there have been particular Christmases that have been difficult for many. Clearly this year will fall into the latter category.
So how do we prepare for Christmas 2020? In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving of 2009 I was nearly ill worrying about hosting our family Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, Mom having died the preceding January. But then a friend commented that perhaps my family needed to change their expectations. That was remarkably freeing - not because my family needed to change anything, but because I did. As soon as I recognized that every detail did not have to be just as Mom had always done it, things fell neatly into place. Indeed for eleven years now we’ve enjoyed a tasty turkey dinner and, more importantly, each other’s company without me or anyone else fretting over the fact I didn’t make the gravy from scratch. The point is we all need to change our expectations this year. Rather than focusing on what we can’t do, on which traditions, be they at church or at home, will be on hiatus for now, we need to start from scratch and make plans within the constraints of what we can do. Perhaps this Advent we can read a book we’ve always meant to read in the weeks before Christmas, but for which we’ve never managed to find the time. Maybe with the money we won’t be spending socializing we can find a way to help a family or business that has lost significant income because of the pandemic or the fires. Perhaps on a Christmas Eve that will be much quieter than usual we can spend time reflecting on a young woman who was obliged to travel by donkey in the late stages of her first pregnancy to a place she may never have been before. There, after going into labor and with her husband unable to find any place better, she ended up giving birth among the animals. Surely that’s not how Mary would have wanted things to unfold, but it didn’t change the fact that the child she bore grew up to change the world.
Christmas 2020 will surely not be what we’re used to, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be holy and even special in ways we’ve not experienced before, if only we’re open to the possibility.
