19 Days to Christmas!  Tuesday, Dec 6, 2022

“Christmas Multiplied”

I admit it.  I’m a Christmas junkie.  

I love all things Christmas, but not in an obnoxious way.  I don’t wear Christmas sweaters with Santa’s picture on it and I won’t stand up to sing Christmas carols in a restaurant (or anywhere, for that matter).  However, I did start hanging lights the day before Halloween.  I didn’t get my tree up until this past weekend (a real tree, of course), but that’s just because I was still busy with the lights and the electrical problems that surfaced in their aftermath.  Now that all the tree and house decorations are in place, I can relax from preparing and now enjoy the celebration!  Yes, my six weeks of preparation will yield three weeks of festive enjoyment.

Some people might think that we, as a culture, are a bit obsessive with Christmas since we have stretched it into an entire Holiday Season.   I argue otherwise: Why would we NOT celebrate our favorite day by adding more favorite days to it?!  It seems only logical that if we enjoy something enough to celebrate then we should multiply it so that we can enjoy it even more! 

Do you know anyone that multiplied their child’s birthday into a birthday weekend or even an entire birthday week?  It’s likely that many of us have witnessed birthday multiplication, so we might as well multiply Christmas Day into an entire Holiday Season, right?

History has already proven that my commercial argument is correct.  We already endorse a Holiday Season stretching from Black Friday in November to early January.  I know I can keep my decorations up for at least the Twelve Days after Christmas, but I do wonder if I will still be thinking about my “Why” for Christmas after those twelve days have passed.  Will I keep the lights on the tree for the right reason, or, like so many other special days, will I just pitch everything in the dumpster once Christmas passes and get back to my usual routines?

This year, if I really want to make Christmas last longer than the milk in my refrigerator, I need to make sure that I’m focusing on the Christmas Multiplication for the right reason:  God loves you and me so much that the LORD chose an imposing, very difficult path to make sure we were given enough chances to get things right. 

Yes, it’s okay to be a Christmas junkie!  I’m going all out with Christmas, but I’m also going all out to give God my best for this season.  This time, I’m going to focus on multiplying some gifts that keep on giving the whole year: Loving my neighbor a little better and offering more grace to those who need it.

God provided Christmas so that I could understand Love and Grace from the One who invented it.  Maybe this Christmas I can put as much effort into giving my heart as I do into decking the halls. 

 “Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.”  (Colossians 3:17, The Message)