Peppermint Hot Chocolate

Trees still covered with colored leaves, 60 degrees outside, and not a single flake of snow. December in Texas sure does not feel like Christmas! The closest thing I can get to feeling Christmas is a Peppermint Hot Chocolate at Starbucks, where I am currently.

The last couple of days I have been thinking a lot about what Christmas means to me and reminiscing Christmases past. This year, I'm living the farthest from my immediate family that I ever have around the holidays and it's pretty sad. At least I was able to spend Thanksgiving with beloved, extended family after a spontaneous 13 hour drive to Omaha!

Something about this year just doesn't feel like Christmas, and I don't think it is just the change of location. One of my primary giving love lanugages is gifts but with having only $70 in the bank and a credit card balance more than 10 times that, I won't be showing my love by gifts to people this year. Without snow, lights or sparkling snowflake decorations, our house feels naked. Living out in the country half an hour from the closest shopping mall limits me to Walmart Christmas aisles to have any glittering feeling of the North Pole. I miss window shopping! I miss seeing children with excited faces (or ones full of tears) waiting to sit on Santa's lap!

The older I get the more the magic of Christmas seems to not exist. Did it ever exist? Was it just perceived by me to be there? Is the magic actually gone or just my ability to see it?

We have been talking a lot lately about what is more important, reality or one's perceived reality? I believe perceived reality is. The words I say do not always communicate to the hearer what I mean. What is more valid, what I said or what the person heard? What I do does not always communicate what I intend to. What speaks louder, my actions or my words? What the person hears and what my actions say are much louder than my words.

Now, I am typically a realist. I'm typically not a dreamer. Shannon once asked me if I was a gas pedal or a brake. I replied, "Neither, I'm a clutch!" If an idea has potential I will think through all the possibilities it would take to make it happen and then cautiously advise from there by asking questions of the plan until I am sufficed to let them go ahead with it in whatever gear they need to proceed in, and I am there to take them down a couple gears, if needed.

Around Christmas we need to be aware of what is real, but let's also not forget the magic! I believe that Christmas is what you want it to be. If you want to see it as a marketing scheme to make people buy stuff they don't need, then that is what it will be to you. If all you want to remember is that Jesus was born and He is the only gift we need to give others, then that is all it will be to you. But is it wrong to think it is more than both of those things? Let's not just look at Christmas through a legalistic Christian's eyes. Let's see the magic!

There is magic! I choose to see it!

The magic is seen in communities comming together to perform, "A Christmas Carol", of neighbors opening up their homes to friends for hot chocolate and cookies, to the kids who get a snow day out in their yards building snowmen (well, ok, not here in Texas, but you get the point!), and there is magic in the four year old child's eyes as they go to bed anxiously awaiting Santa's coming.

This time of year gives us a great opportunity to connect with people we might not otherwise connect with. Let's get out there and connect, not tell them why they are wrong, how they are being unbiblical (does the Bible say, "Thou shalt not tell you children there is a Santa claus?!" - No, it doesn't!). Instead let's put up those lights! Deck out that tree! Hang some mistletoe and actually use it! Celebrate life and the fact we have had another year of God's amazing grace in our lives! :)