Life Lessons: Pondering Christmas

Susan Zimmerman

I love Christmas, but often find it hard to celebrate the real Christmas well. It’s easy to enjoy seasonal delights: the warm glow of luminarias, hanging family ornaments on the tree, making my grandmother’s cranberries, exchanging gifts, savoring family time, and of course, cookies! But it’s hard to focus and let the meaning of Jesus’ birth fully impact my heart and mind. Why? I think it’s because of my captivation by my favorite seasonal delights, along with a general sense of rush and pressure to take in all that the holiday season appears to offer.

As much as I enjoy all the special festivities around Christmas— and there is nothing wrong with doing so—every year I long to not let the trappings of Christmas get in the way of having the miracle of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, penetrate my soul. I want to be like Mary and “treasure[d] up all these things, pondering them.” (Luke 2:19)

Sometimes God brings experiences into our lives that help us do that. Here are two Christmases past when that happened for me.

1996: The Perfect Christmas Brunch

From the time our two children were very young, we made it clear to them that Santa Claus was not real. Lest I sound like a grinch, I want to say that this was a personal decision for our family, not one we would press on anyone else. But for us, it felt right. We didn’t want Santa belief to potentially interfere with belief in Jesus. And, quite selfishly, I was not about to let our kids think we had nothing to do with the gifts we worked so hard to select, buy, assemble and wrap.

Our decision was accompanied with solemn warnings to our children, once they started school, not to spoil any classmates’ belief in Santa. And thankfully they did really well with this. There were no reports, anyway, of tearful friends learning from our children that Santa was not who they believed he was.

However, not emphasizing Santa hardly made me a Christmas saint. I was not above caring deeply about appearances, and the holidays were no exception. The Christmas that our daughter was in first grade and our son in four-year-old preschool, we had an opportunity to go to brunch at a nice restaurant the Sunday before Christmas. And it was shaping up to be a great family time, which was all good, but also, in my mind, something like a holiday postcard scene. The kids had new Christmas outfits! The brunch was going to be fancy and festive! The weather was Christmas cold and clear! I carefully schooled the kids about how to be on their best behavior, and after attending morning service, off we went.

The brunch was lovely, and the kids sailed through the meal beautifully. They used their inside voices, ate what was on their plates, and genuinely seemed to enjoy the lights and décor. We were, I was sure, the picture-perfect holiday family.

Then we walked to the front to pay our bill. The hostess, beaming with holiday cheer, approached our two children. “And what is Santa going to bring you this year?”

An innocuous question at Christmas for most any child. Not for my daughter. Before I could intervene, she handled the situation. Fixing the hostess with a stern gaze, she announced, not in an inside voice, “There is no Santa Claus!”

Her shout echoed across the restaurant. In an instant, the entire room went silent. The hostess looked shocked, then, she glared at me. Her look seemed to say, “What kind of parent would rob an innocent child of holiday joy?”

I wish I could say that graciously, tactfully, I shared with the hostess that we focused on Jesus’ birth at Christmas instead of Santa. But I had no words. In that moment, all I wanted to do was leave. Quickly. Which we did.

We did tell our daughter that what she said was right, and that we were glad she understood what Christmas was really about. We also asked her to try to remember to use her inside voice at restaurants.

In the days, and really years, since, I often have reflected on that moment. We have actually remembered it fondly as a humorous family story. But I have also wondered at my reaction. Why was I embarrassed? Why was I hesitant to at least try to share further with the hostess? Was I so determined that day to create a lovely family memory that I missed an unexpected opportunity to express what Christmas truly is?

On that Christmas, and on many thereafter, my daughter’s words have echoed in my heart, “There is no Santa Claus!” There is only Jesus.

2014: Three time zones and the BBC

2014 was our first empty nest Christmas. Our daughter had gotten married in August, and our son had left for Asia, also in August, for a mid-term missions opportunity. Both of our extended families were far flung and unable to gather with us that year. Except for a small Christmas Eve dinner with our daughter and new son-in-law, it was just the two of us for the holiday.

Which was fine, but we both felt a little letdown. No family Christmas morning. No big and noisy gathering around the table. No group games or family stories. It was a little too quiet.

Shortly before Christmas we talked with our son on Skype. This was his first Christmas away from home. He was going to gather with his team on Christmas Day, but he also wanted to find a meaningful way to connect with us.

Our son mentioned that he had been getting to know some people from the UK on his team and in the local expat community, and they were all telling him about the Christmas Eve broadcast of Lessons and Carols on the BBC. He had an idea: the three of us could all listen to the live broadcast at the same time, while also on Skype with each other. The broadcast was at 3:00 p.m. in the UK, 9:00 a.m. for us in Wheaton, and 11:00 p.m. for him in Asia.

I had heard of the BBC’s Lessons and Carols broadcast, but never tuned in. Usually, the day before Christmas was a flurry of last-minute meal prep, setting the holiday table, final gift wrapping, and running to the store for a missed ingredient or must-have stocking stuffer. Usually, there was no time, or so I thought, to spend Christmas Eve morning listening to a program of sacred music and Scripture.

There was time this year. At 9:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, we sat at our kitchen table in Wheaton, opened up Skype on a laptop, and then used a second device to tune in to the BBC. At 11:00 pm, in a high-rise apartment, in a vast city in a remote province of a country that didn’t acknowledge Christmas, our son did the same. And at 3:00 p.m., in King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England, a choir began to sing A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, just as it has every year since 1918.

For 90 minutes that Christmas Eve morning, there were no seasonal trappings. No feeling of rush or pressure. No fear of missing out on some must-do Christmas tradition. There was just the stirring simplicity of music and Scripture, telling the transcendent story of the Word made flesh, all made sweeter, surely, by the realization that this was Christmas with our son. My heart was taught, and moved, to truly ponder the amazing truth of Jesus made a babe, so he could redeem me from the need to rely on anything, at Christmas or any other time, but on him.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” —John 1:14, KJV, read as the conclusion of the ninth reading of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols