Out of Christmas, Into Routine

Things can change a whole lot in the span of a month. It wasn’t quite a month ago that I wrote of picking out a Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm and starting a new family tradition with our family. With great anticipation we brought the tree home. There was a lot to look forward to.

Today we took the tree down. There was no fanfare, no Christmas music playing in the background, no remembering which ornament came from which year. No, just the task of getting everything taken down, boxed up and put away for next year. There was with all of this a certain let down—that the events of the past month had come to an end; that the daily routine which had been interrupted with shopping trips, Christmas parties, Christmas movies, Christmas concerts, Christmas meals, family gatherings, and the like, was now settling back into just that—the daily routine. Nothing wrong with routine. I kind of like routines. I just wasn’t ready for the daily routine to come quite yet.

As my son and I carried the tree outside and readied it to be taken to a recycling center, I wanted some sort of fanfare, some sort of festival. We speak with excitement about “putting up the tree.” Should we not also have a similar excitement as we “take down the tree?” Perhaps we build up the season a bit too much. Could it be that in all our excitement to get to Christmas we really do make it out to be something it was never meant to be, and for which, with all our decorations and gift-giving and receiving, will never be? Are we looking for a perfection we simply can never expect to find?

If I read the Christmas story from Luke there was a lot of routine stuff happening. Some miraculous things too, but routine stuff as well. Take for instance the taxes. Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem to be registered for a tax. I paid property taxes and car taxes this month. And come January, I’ll be getting ready to file income tax returns. It happens every year. Pretty routine.

Luke continues. Bethlehem is busy and there’s no room in the inn for Mary and Joseph. I don’t know what inns were like in those days, but I know when sports events are happening in certain cities, you couldn’t find a room if you had to. That’s pretty routine.

Mary gives birth to her firstborn, a son named Jesus. It hardly fails when I am in our local hospital that I hear the lullaby melody signaling the birth of a new baby. Again, routine.

But Luke reminds us in the midst of such routine, people encountered God. Remember the shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night? In the midst of routine, God.

So we are back into a routine, or soon will be. Maybe we try so hard to encounter God through the upstaging of Christmas, that we never can hear or see God. Maybe it’s in the routine after all, if we pay attention, open our lives and our hearts, that we will hear God.