A Christmas Eve Reflection by Belinda Lanyk, M.Div.
Community Relations Director, Denver Urban Ministries
December 24, 2004
Joint Christmas Eve Service
My name is Belinda Lanyk, and I work with Denver Urban Ministries, or DenUM. Many of you are familiar with DenUM as an organization that helps individuals and families to work toward stability and greater self-sufficiency. We provide emergency food, clothing, infant items, and blankets, as well as utility assistance when folks are in danger of losing heat or hot water. Our job resource center provides bus passes or tokens for working folks, job search assistance, case management, uniforms, sack lunches, and professional clothing. On behalf of DenUM and myself, I am honored to be a part of your celebration today and to join this generous community, which has for over 20 years been a constant supporter of DenUM’s work. Thank you for your partnership, and thank you for inviting me to say a brief word.
I’m here to share my experience and observations about Christmas, and Not Christmas.
Christmas is a time of fullness. The typical Christmastime altar or tree is a striking example: In the midst of the coldest winter we have lush, glittering greenery. And now if you’ll think of your favorite Christmas television commercial as a reflection of reality you’ll have an idea of the picture I’m getting at – At Christmastime, pantries are full of food; living rooms, car trunks and closets are full of gifts; WE are full of anticipation – for gatherings with friends and family, waiting for a loved one to open the perfect gift, wondering what we ourselves will receive – and of course, we are full of anticipation for the birth of the Christ Child!
Christmas is abundance, fellowship, and satisfaction with one’s place in the world. It is childlike joy and contentment.
But there is also a particular fullness of life that I call Not Christmas, and each one of us experiences it to a degree. You can see it in many ways. Here are some that I’ve encountered recently:
1) It is Christmastime and we are full of anxiety about what we do not have or cannot get. A friend of mine puts it this way: his holiday virtues are bitterness, resentment and greed!
2) We are bitterly aware of relationships that are not what we would wish at a time of family and friendship. I have a friend going through a difficult breakup, who will counsel any who listen: Do not breakup during the holidays. She can’t eat or sleep, let alone feel jolly and sociable, and Christmas makes her feel out of sync.
3) We are grieving losses that we feel keenly during the holidays. A colleague of mine tells me that she loves Christmas, but it’s just not the same without her mother… Instead of joy, her grief is accentuated by the happenings of Christmas.
4) Maybe we are physically unwell and unable to participate in the ways we wish we could. Certainly it always strikes me when I hear of folks who are in the hospital at this time, and even those of us suffering colds or flu feel rundown by the holiday rush.
Maybe it is none of those things for you, but I am convinced that simply by virtue of being human, we are full of emotions that do not fit the picture of joy, fellowship and salvation that we await.
And the effect of this Christmas/Not Christmas distinction seems significant:
Christmas is tomorrow, when we will proclaim with relief, “At last a savior is born!” A savior has come to take us from our despair and to release us from our humanity. Our savior brings us the state of being that is Christmas.
But today – the day before Christmas – and for the last several weeks of pressured gift-getting and gathering, we have experienced Not Christmas. And in this waiting time, the exuberant picture of fulfillment that Christmastime represents has cast its too-bright, unforgiving light like a spotlight over the aspects of our lives that are not up to par for Christmas.
We want to be full of Christmas and its happiness, contentment, love, and salvation, and much of the pressure we put on ourselves in December springs from this. Tomorrow when my mother finally says, “Shut up, sit down, and let’s open presents like a family!” she is reaching for the Christmas ideal of fellowship!
We want to be full of Christmas. And when we are instead full of sadness, discontentment, loneliness and brokenness, our humanness is magnified to ugly proportions. We find ourselves, as a friend of mine did just last week, yelling and exchanging curses over a parking spot at the mall. She picked up a lawsuit when all she had intended to do was to stop and pick up a little gift, out of love.
I offer to you that the reason Jesus came as a gift to us and the reason why his coming is so profound is that Jesus came to be a part of the fullness of this crazy, Not-Christmas human life. Through Christmas, Jesus came to be a part of Not Christmas.
Think about it – why are we touched so powerfully by Jesus’ example? Isn’t it enough to know that God in Heaven is Love, that God is “Light and the life of humanity,” as John tells us?
No, we as Christians proclaim our need for God incarnate in Jesus Christ. We believe in a God who willingly subjected himself to hunger and homelessness, violence, uncertainty, and vulnerability – the very qualities of human life that we experience in this season and struggle to free ourselves from in our pursuit of Christmas.
An example? DenUM is blessed with a large proportion of its donations for the year during December. Why? Because the hunger and homelessness, violence, uncertainty, and vulnerability of DenUM clients should not happen at Christmastime.
And yet this is why Jesus joined us. Because we’re not there yet. We have not reached the state of being that is Christmas.
Here on the eve of Jesus’ human birth, I submit that the experience of humanness is a mutual gift between us and Christ. Jesus humbled himself for us to experience relationship with him in a very human way. We trust that Jesus knows our pain because Christmas signifies that he himself endured every danger, every humiliation, every frustration we might encounter as “Not Christmas.”
And how is our humanness a gift to God? Because the very moments when we are Not Christmas are the ones that help us later to understand and have compassion for others in the human family. Because of these experiences, we can say, “Yes – I know how that feels. Boy is that a tough place to be.” And as Jesus is present to our brokenness, we can be witness and comfort to others. What gives us grace and patience for others is being personally aware of the anxiety of not paying a bill so that you can buy a Christmas gift for someone you love. Having had a day when everything little went wrong and only got worse. Being angry with oneself for making a mistake – and oh, the humiliation of finding out that everyone around you expected it from you.
Moments when we ourselves need prayer are moments to remember when others need help.
Tonight, tomorrow, and throughout the year, I invite you to acknowledge and honor your moments of humanity – moments when you are not satisfied and you are really Not Christmas. Because although tonight we are part of a great celebration, it is inevitable that each of us will experience times when we hunger for things to be different, times when we are in need of something we just don’t have. I pray that you will feel this gift and honor it as the opportunity it is for God to plant grace and compassion within us – it is the means for us to be Christmas to one another.
If God moves you to do so, I pray that you’ll give generously to organizations like DenUM and your church ministries, whose mission it is to reach out to others among us who are hurting and vulnerable. And I pray that both your Christmas and your Not Christmas experience will be ones that draw you closer to God in Christ. Thank you.