Christmastide

Can you feel it? That special feeling one gets at Christmastide?

What? You don't know what Christmastide is? You think that since December 25 has come and gone that Christmas is over? No my friends, the 25th of December is just the beginning of what we call Christmas.

The four Sundays prior to that day are the period we call Advent, the expectation of the coming of the Christ Child. Christmas actually begins on the 25th, continues through the next 12 days (the 12 days of Christmas, get it?), and ends with Epiphany on January 6.

There's a lot of folks now-a-days who decorate their houses for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day, and then take them down Christmas afternoon. What a shame, for they truly don't know that the season of Christmas doesn't start at the end of November. For those of us in church work we, too, can get caught up in the secular rush of getting to December 25, and then letting the wonderful season of Christmastide go after the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. When was the last time you stepped into a church after December 25 and greeted someone with a hearty "Merry Christmas?" Or even heard it mentioned that Christmas was still going on?

The TV specials (Rudolph, Frosty, etc.) are all done. Families have returned from visiting relatives. The decorations are starting to sag a bit. The tree (if you've a live one) is turning brown and the needles are falling off in ever greater clumps. And we find ourselves being dragged back into the hum drum existence of day to day life.

Let me encourage you to make this year different. To make Christmastide 2010 one of rest, reflection, and joy. To remember that Emmanuel, God with us, has come down to share in our life.

And to communicate the message that there's hope in this dreary world.
Merry Christmas.

Maranatha.