It's Christmas Eve, and I am in my office, having finished our family service and waiting for our candlelight service.
My family--all thirteen of them--have gone home. They're going to watch a movie while waiting for me.
When I get there, we'll begin our Christmas celebration. That's really strange.
You see, I've only been in ministry for a few years--but I've been a mother, and grandmother, for much longer.
I'm not used to "working" on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, like Christmas itself, is about tradition. And for me, I think, like almost everyone, that means family traditions. It's the Christmas Eve meal I made every year. It's the "you can open one present tonight" speech. It's hanging the stockings. It's putting out cookies for Santa, and food for the reindeer. It's watching my husband, and sons in law, assemble complicated toys.
It's going to a Christmas Eve service--not officiating at one.
There's a part of me that really, really, really wanted to go home with them. There's a part of me that says "my family shouldn't be watching a movie tonight. They should be doing Christmas things. They should be doing the things that we always do."
And then I realize. They're probably just fine. It's me who is feeling strange. My daughters made the dinner I used to make. We ate it mid-day, just not at night. And I'm here, in my office, and not at home. I'm the one who's out of my comfort zone. And, like most times of sadness, it's really, when I think about it, all about me. What I want. Not what--like a worship experience--I can give other people.
When I think about it, perhaps Christmas isn't a time to be "stuck in tradition". After all, the birth of the Christ child was hardly traditional. It was, instead, an unprecedented event, an event that changed everything. From that moment on, nothing was ever quite the same.
I'm not giving up on tradition, of course. The eight and nine year olds will still be awake when I get home. The stockings will still have to be tended to. But I will have shared, in ways I never have before, the Christmas Eve experience. I hope that in my life, now, every Christmas Eve will have something just a little bit different, something it's never had before.
Merry Christmas. And many more.
