Confessions of a Seminarian

Christmas Chaos

Christmas. Yep. It’s here. Ready or not, here it comes. Prepare to spend more than you can afford on gifts, laugh at your uncle’s dumb jokes, and gain 5-10 pounds of holiday junk food. Isn’t it crazy how life speeds up right when we should be able to slow down and appreciate it?

Does anyone else feel like Christmas has become really… fake?

Right before I started Seminary last year, I had a brief career in retail Asset Protection. I was in charge of security and safety for an entire store. I had the (dis)pleasure of working 12-14 hour days over the holidays, and specifically on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving), and the day after Christmas. “Nightmare” is not strong enough of a word… 

The term “Christmas Spirit” was almost a joke as people pushed, shoved, and punched (yes, punched) their way to electronics, desperately searching for that $600 Playstation 3 to bribe their kids into loving them, hopelessly trying to make up for missing school plays, baseball games, and not being there when they needed mommy or daddy most.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe. The retail world is enough to jade anyone, believe me! But I think that last year served as a “boiling point” for me that has forever changed me.

I did not grow up a Christian. I grew up believing in Santa Claus and for most of my childhood, I saw Christmas as that one time of the year I got the “coolest” Lego sets, Ninja Turtles, and G.I. Joes. I vaguely remember plastic nativity scenes displayed in yards and outside churches, and knew the carols as well as the next guy, but I never really made a connection to why Christmas had anything to do with those strange traditions.

And now I’m in seminary (talk about a change from retail). I am constantly reminded, with many cliché phrases that we “celebrate the birth of Christ,” or “On this day, 2000 years ago, God came into the world in the form of a babe.” But seriously, what does that even mean? How has that mutated into the insanity of the modern Holiday Season?

Conversely, the problem with being in seminary is that I hear it SO much that I don’t appreciate the full meaning of those words. How could I continue my self indulgence and capitulation to a Capitalist Christmas if I truly understood the HUGENESS of God being born as one of us?

The only comparison I could come up with that illustrated the conceptual absurdity of that statement is my childhood fascination of Legos (stay with me here). I was really into the medieval sets specifically, so let’s say I used my Christmas gift to build a castle. And in my imagination it was Camelot, the mythical castle of King Arthur and his beloved Knights of the Round Table. God coming into this world is about as fantastical as me giving life to and entering into my fictional Lego world as King Arthur. It’s nuts! I know! It’s absurd!

But it’s also miraculous.

Look around at our world right now.

Darfur.

Iran.

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Omaha, Nebraska.

The shootings at the church in Colorado.

Your own family, even.

God took a huge risk to enter into our world as a defenseless child. But to Him, it was hardly a problem. Not because He could protect Himself from our evil, but because He loves us enough to suffer it gladly:

…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

So much so that Jesus’ last request in prayer to God the Father before he endured the cross was that:

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, (John 17:22)

His was not merely a willing sacrifice, where one would perhaps grudgingly acknowledge that their loss would benefit the greater good. His was a sacrifice done gladly because His loss was joyfully accepted because God loves His creation.

As you subject yourselves to the Holiday Hoopla and franticly shop for your friends and family, remember why we celebrate. We celebrate the Love of One Who gladly GAVE EVERYTHING for those who deserved nothing. Please, do give generously! But don’t forget to accept and appreciate the greatest gift of all:

God Himself.