The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

By: American Decency Staff

Last weekend, my wife and I had a Christmas movie marathon. We watched three or four cheesy holiday movies in a row not only so we could get in the mood for Christmas, but so we could practice rolling our eyes.

Christmas movies are a great example of how idyllic we expect the holidays to be. Every single one has a family that must be reconciled, it is imperative that there be snow, and if the movie is really cool, someone will show up in a horrible Christmas sweater. In the end of every one, the titles will roll on a loving family enjoying a picture perfect Christmas together.

There will be laughter, there will be mistletoe, someone will end up in jail, and in the end Christmas always turns out perfect.

As Matt Chandler recently described it:

"What  you're getting thrown onto you via every commercial and every television special… Even the classic movies we're drawn to in this season are promising you a reality that is not probably lined up with actual life. What we see commercial after commercial, what we see show after show is… what? I mean, we're all going to get a Lexus or something. Somebody is going to Jared. Often, apparently.

We can see that we're all going to gather as family, and even if there's conflict, it's going to end with us hugging and having a lot of Christmas joy as we carve the perfect turkey that came out of the oven with hardly anybody even having to work at that. People come from far and near, and we gather, and there's a fire in the fireplace. There's a feel to this time of year… and we love it…"

For many of us though, that feeling will fall flat. That expectation to sit on the couch basking in the warmth of a fire in the fireplace and the love a family won't end up like it does in the movies.

Most of us aren't going to have the picture perfect Christmas. For some of us, it will be little things, like delayed flights or cats knocking over the Christmas tree, but for others it will be huge things. A teenage girl from our local high school recently committed suicide. What kind of Christmas will her parents have? How about the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting that will relive the loss of their children a few weeks before every Christmas for the rest of their lives?

None the less, we will all have the feeling that we're missing out on something. Christmas is SUPPOSED to be the "most wonderful time of the year," right? We're all holding out for that "Christmas miracle," that paint us into a Currier and Ives piece.

We should know by now that Christmas will probably be a letdown. I'm not trying to be a Scrooge by any means. I hope you all have a great Christmas, but in the end, Christmas is made of 24 normal, non-magical hours like every other day of the year. People will be the same people on Christmas that they are on the other 364 and we're all going to let each other down.

That's all.

Merry Christmas!

Thankfully, no, that's not all. What are we supposed to do about these cravings that we experience for the "magic of Christmas?" Let's ask C.S. Lewis.

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

The very hollow feeling we can get when the holidays are over simply show us that we were made by God for greater things.

That's infinitely more exciting than any corny Christmas movie I've ever seen!

We get let down by Christmas every year because we expect there to be peace on earth and it's not here yet.

Even as we celebrate the coming of our King, we recognize that He has not yet established His kingdom on earth and we still have to put up with our own brokenness and the brokenness of the world around us.

That gives us all the more reason to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace.

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