christmas past

december 25th has come and gone. it seems for the past month that i was looking forward for christmas to arrive but yet i was not prepared for it when it came. this year it just did not seem like christmas. with all the anticipation and excitement that one can build, there seemed to be something missing.

everyone around me it seemed were enjoying the holiday season as they talked about shopping and putting up decorations but i guess somehow i missed christmas. i blinked and it was gone.
as much as i could listen to christmas tunes and see the christmas pageant there seemed to be something missing. the harder i tried to make it feel like christmas the less it actually did. even with the world around me covered with snow, i just felt like "it was always winter, but never christmas."

i think i talked and wrote about churches canceling services and others saying happy holidays that i myself misdirected the anticipation of what christmas was all about to turn it into an even that needs to be celebrated the same way by every christian.

each year christmas becomes more commercialized and i complain a little bit more. while i do this i take my focus of the Christ born of a virgin and placed in a manger. so even though christmas has past i think today of the humility of Christ placing himself in the hands of a couple. even though he was God he cried and placed his every need in hands of someone else to provide the food and care that he needed.

one allowing himself to do this is obviously more humble then i. it was never about himself. he cared more for others then he did of himself. i pray even if i "missed christmas" that the incarnation will affect my life this year and hopefully the idea that God came to this earth to die will affect all that i come into contact with.