Saturday, December 19, 2015

The house isn't decorated, the cards aren't mailed: Doing what really matters this Christmas...

 
The year that our older daughter was born, we joined neighbors for a Christmas celebration. Their home was so beautifully decorated, and I had serious Christmas-décor envy. Not a nook, not a cranny of their home was untouched by my friend’s very creative and talented hand.
 
A couple of years later, as we were preparing to have friends over for an Advent evening dinner, I asked my friend for her help in getting our house ready. I hauled out the bins of items that I had acquired through the years, and she brought a few more lovely items to add. In one evening, she had helped me transform our house into a showplace, from the Christmas trees, to the stairwell, to the mantle, to the chandeliers, to lovely centerpieces for the tables. And she had done it with such great ease, patiently guiding me through all of the steps that I needed to make it all happen on my own.
 
Faithfully, I recreated her beautiful work for a number of years after, always giving her the credit for helping me put it all together. But somewhere along the way, the hours that it took me to do it all seemed to escape. There were Birthday Parties for Baby Jesus at our house, and with the kids at Emmanuel Center - time spent trying to teach children the true meaning of the season. There were gifts to wrap for children at Emmanuel Center, who otherwise might not have gifts at Christmas, and meals-on-wheels to deliver to seniors. And, in more recent years, there were homebound parishioners to visit, and hands to hold.
 
Our house isn’t decorated. The cards haven’t been mailed. And the shopping? Well, no, that hasn’t been finished yet, either.
 
A piece of me wonders if I’ve let our daughters down. As they arrive home from college, it won’t be to a Southern Living decorated home or an extraordinarily decadent dessert.
 
But I hope, as they mature, their own Christmas to-do list will better mirror the one above, upon which I recently stumbled, than the one to which I aspired years ago. I hope that hours that might be filled with buying presents will instead be hours during which they will be present with those who need them. I hope that the attention that might otherwise be given to hanging decorations and lights will instead be attention given to being a light in lives that are filled with darkness. I do believe that, in the midst of very busy lives and too-often misplaced priorities, this modified to-do list is one which will serve us all better in these days to come.