Back to Real Life

Christmas decorations create magic in the home with their flickering lights, beautiful angel wings flapping heaven's scent, and fake smell of pine in green and red candles.... until the day after Christmas. On the day after Christmas, they become a huge pile of clutter that SOMEONE now has to collect and put away. No longer do they beckon me to sit and contemplate whether Mary really understood the enormity of her responsibility. Now instead they taunt me to defy the law of physics and closet space and get them stored away for another year. Even when I feel healthy that is a task I abhor, but I am sick with a wretched cough that rips my chest cartilege with every racking explosion. So I wrestle with which bothers me more- the now antiquated Christmas clutter or the spasms of coughing that will undoubtedly erupt if I try to put them away today. My family is still fast asleep for hours so I have plenty of time to clean. Every year I want to just get a garbage can and toss everything in it so that I don't have to carefully wrap each precious glass ornament, and then lug the enormous bin of Christmas cheer up the steep pull-down attic steps.

But then, I remember what happens every year shortly after Thanksgiving when I first lug the enormous bin down the steep pull-down attic steps. As I unwrap each precious glass ornament, a flood of memories cascade down the rapids of my soul. These are the crystal icicles Mom put on the tree every year when she finally defied the kids' garish tastes and decided we would have an "elegant" tree. Funny how I love the elegant tree as well. I have a garish tree for the kids, and an elegant tree for me. And as I unwrap the homemade Angels and snowmen made by the children when they were young, I always get a lump in my throat wondering where those hectic joyful years went. I unwrap the hand painted ornaments that creative sister Amy made with special significance to each of us. And I unwrap the little creche I made, this year noticing that baby Jesus' arm was broken despite my care putting it away the year before.

That would be sad if my hope was in the permanence of the material drapings of our Christmas, but of course it is not. And this year, I have the beautiful new creche Asherel made and gave me as a gift. It is exquisite and much sturdier than the fragile one I made anyway.

So I will probably tackle the clutter after subduing my cough with caffeine and zinc cough drops. But I think I will leave the new little Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in a place of prominence. First of all, it was made with the hands of love of a child that sought to know her mother's heart, and that will sustain me through many a heart-break in the new year. But also, I think it may help me to glance over at it each day, to see the hope and love on the face of a slightly bewildered Mary, the protection and determination of faithful Joseph, and the innocence and miracle of a baby that seems so vulnerable and yet carries the weight of the world on his little shoulders. That baby will remind me that even when I feel my weakest, when the inevitable disappointments threaten to tumult to despair, when there really seems no possible happy ending..... then I will look at the baby and remember that God's greatest miracle started off in diapers.