When Christmas Loses It's Magic

Christmas as a child was magical…the lights, the music, the bells of Santa’s sleigh, the gifts Christmas morning, the yummy food, and all of the extra time with family and friends.Christmas Eve was always the main celebration for my immediate family.My mom would fill the countertop with hors d’oeuvres, which felt super fancy as we typically ate casseroles and Sunday roasts.We exchanged gifts, stayed up late, and sipped sparkling grape juice out of real wine glasses while under the twinkly lights.It was everything that I have tried to make every Christas since feel like.But as I got older, Christmas began to lose it’s sparkle.Christmas Eve became a piercing sting of reality of all that we lost, as our new tradition became taking candles to my Dad’s grave sight every year in the cold and steep snow.As special as that tradition became to all of us kids, the magic was gone.Yet, I desperately clung to it; that feeling of having a magical Christmas.The feeling that all the movies have, what we see in the commercials, and what I remembered feeling as a young child.Through high school and early college, I clung to any magic that I could still squeeze out of the season; the magic that I could create.I claimed to LOVE Christmas, but I think I more loved the idea of the young Christmases that I remembered so dearly because none of the Christmases were quite living up to the picture I had in my head.It seemed to always end in disappointment by Christmas Day. Except for one Christmas Eve, Trevor completely caught me off guard and proposed at my family Christmas.He knew how much that night always meant to me, and it renewed my excitement for some Christmas magic.I carried that excitement into our early marriage making sure the entire month of December was filled with special traditions and activities.It all seemed to work until Jasper’s, our first child, first Christmas.It was the day after Thanksgiving, the beginning of all of my Christmas traditions and activities.We set up the tree, and he was mesmerized by it.I could instantly dream up all the magic that we would create for him that month.But then that very same evening, we were told that my mom had pancreatic cancer.That year we all clung to anything that made our family’s Christmas normal, but everything that could be seen as magical was filled with deep, deep sorrow.The very next Christmas was the first Christmas without my mom, and I desperately tried to do it exactly as she would have done, thinking I could make the deep hole a little less noticeable or hurtful for my siblings.I painstakingly white knuckled Christmas to keep it all mom’s way.And I have continued to do this years.Slowly, very slowly, I’ve let go of some of the traditions, realizing that they are not mine to hold.I had desperately been trying to keep Christmas magical even though it didn’t feel like there was any magic left. There was too much pain, too much missing.Add onto that the years of having every Christmas activity filled with babies crying, toddlers throwing fits, tired kids, and two exhausted parents, and I slowly became less and less excited about the Christmas season.Christmas began to arrive faster and faster each year.This year, after spending a day putting all of the little Christmas decor out around our house, I even caught myself asking my family, “Do we really need to put the tree up this year?”I did not intend to sound like a scrooge, it honestly simply sounded exhausting going to the work of it.In my younger years, this is something I swore I never would say, but the hurt and the pain of Christmas never living up to expectations was so very slowly eating away at my heart that I didn’t even quite notice it happening. I noticed that I didn’t enjoy the season as much.I noticed that I didn’t love the shopping for gifts.I noticed that much of the baking that my kids loved sure felt like an obligation.I noticed that going to family Christmases felt more exhausting than enjoyable.And I sure did notice that my favorite Christmas movie became “It’s a Wonderful Life” because it showed the pain that life can carry.But here’s the thing, I didn’t notice where the true magic of the season came from.It is not my job to make Christmas magical.I can not do it for myself, for my kids, or for anyone else.But it is only HIS! This truth penetrated my heart yesterday.I felt it so deeply like never before.Jesus is the only one that can make Christmas magical.I knew this to be true, yet I didn’t at the same time.I knew He was the reason for the season, yet I didn’t see that He was also the reason for the magic.I was still striving to create magic myself out of my traditions, lights, movies, and gifts.The magic of Christmas is not the sparkly lights or my mom’s chocolate fudge, but it’s in Jesus coming to Earth to mend all the brokenness, loss, and hurt.He came to do that for us all!This is truly magical!Suddenly, the lights look a little more sparkly, and activities look less exhausting and more filled with love.I am letting myself off the hook from many traditions this year that I do not really enjoy, but I am holding onto the one that came as a baby to heal us all.I am thanking God, for bringing magic to my tear filled eyes.Only He could make my broken pieces whole again.If Christmas has lost it’s sparkle, if you’re grieving, in the midst of suffering, exhausted from tiny kids, hurt by grown kids, or pained by unmet expectations, hold onto the baby that came to Earth to die to heal all of this brokenness.In the waiting and in this Christmas season, we can be filled with hope.