Christmas is just around the corner.
But for the first time in my life, I just don’t want it to arrive.
I’ve always been the Christmas “fanatic”, if I may use the word for the lack of better term. I look forward to the gifts, merry-makings, game prizes, foods, firework-displays, decorated trees, blinking lights, well-lit highways, excited chats and shouts of laughter. When I started working, my list adds the following: more parties, more foods, cantatas, special numbers, bonuses, and cash gifts.
So, what seems to be the problem this time?
I don’t know. Christmas has just suddenly become so expensive! You know what I mean: Buy gifts for this and that, contribute for parties here and there, and travel everywhere. It has also become so detailed – “What’s our theme for this year’s party?”, “Your food assignment is (that one which sounds European)”, “I hope my manito/a would give me something from (an elite clothes brand)”. Ok fine!
What had gone wrong? Had I not ever grasped it at all? Where has all my overwhelmed deep-sighing of a well-understood celebration of God-became-man gone?
Because of the movie, I diligently read “A Christmas Carol” online. Now, I just felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. But I don’t want to treat Christmas as a humbug. I know, in my heart of hearts, I have understood what Christmas really is - before. I haven’t just understood it. I have also shared it, and felt it. But now, I seem to have just lost it, for whatever reason that I cannot count anymore. I don’t want to be visited by any kind of Christmas ghost whatsoever! I just want to taste again the joy that Scrooge felt in the story’s ending, although I think the real reason for celebrating Christmas is way, way more than what Charles Dickens presented in his Christmas Carol.
This is now the danger of the repetition. They suddenly become meaningless and obligatory. So today, I begin the journey of retracing my steps to my very first, basic and foundational understanding of what Christmas really is. I pray and I hope that I’d really get there, to rediscover, grasp and embrace the Christ in Christmas.
May this year be similar and yet a different journey for me. If I may not encounter something new, may I just encounter something refreshing. This is my desire… and my very first entry on my grown-up Christmas list.
I’ve always been the Christmas “fanatic”, if I may use the word for the lack of better term. I look forward to the gifts, merry-makings, game prizes, foods, firework-displays, decorated trees, blinking lights, well-lit highways, excited chats and shouts of laughter. When I started working, my list adds the following: more parties, more foods, cantatas, special numbers, bonuses, and cash gifts.
So, what seems to be the problem this time?
I don’t know. Christmas has just suddenly become so expensive! You know what I mean: Buy gifts for this and that, contribute for parties here and there, and travel everywhere. It has also become so detailed – “What’s our theme for this year’s party?”, “Your food assignment is (that one which sounds European)”, “I hope my manito/a would give me something from (an elite clothes brand)”. Ok fine!
What had gone wrong? Had I not ever grasped it at all? Where has all my overwhelmed deep-sighing of a well-understood celebration of God-became-man gone?
Because of the movie, I diligently read “A Christmas Carol” online. Now, I just felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. But I don’t want to treat Christmas as a humbug. I know, in my heart of hearts, I have understood what Christmas really is - before. I haven’t just understood it. I have also shared it, and felt it. But now, I seem to have just lost it, for whatever reason that I cannot count anymore. I don’t want to be visited by any kind of Christmas ghost whatsoever! I just want to taste again the joy that Scrooge felt in the story’s ending, although I think the real reason for celebrating Christmas is way, way more than what Charles Dickens presented in his Christmas Carol.
This is now the danger of the repetition. They suddenly become meaningless and obligatory. So today, I begin the journey of retracing my steps to my very first, basic and foundational understanding of what Christmas really is. I pray and I hope that I’d really get there, to rediscover, grasp and embrace the Christ in Christmas.
May this year be similar and yet a different journey for me. If I may not encounter something new, may I just encounter something refreshing. This is my desire… and my very first entry on my grown-up Christmas list.
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