The Day After Christmas

It was fun, but now it’s over. No more shopping, no more wrapping. No more jingle bells. No more Santa runs to friends and family. Holiday movies have been watched and Christmas CDs are back in the rack. No more prezzies to open—the tree now shelters the unmasked goodies bestowed on us by our loved ones. Ter and I are stuffed with December treats and the kitchen is jammed to the rafters with the surplus. We live in such abundance, we are most grateful to be so fortunate.

There is, however, an oddly hollow sense when all is said and done. Sated and exhausted, we awake on December 26 to the perennial question of “Now what?”

Luckily, I have a plan—but that’s tomorrow’s post.

Last night I wondered what the day after the first Christmas was like. If it had been as anti-climactic as the day after every Christmas since.

The answer is a no-brainer, really. What can possibly outdo a heavenly choir and three wise men dropping by with gifts of gold and rare perfume? Like it’s awaited everyone else in all the centuries to follow, real life awaited the little family in Bethlehem. I bet Mary wanted nothing more than a bath and some peace and quiet, but no—she was expected to preside over the festivities. Apparently none of the kings was able to wield any influence with the local innkeepers, so the party stayed in the stable. The next morning, the kings would have departed, the shepherds returned to their fields, and Mary was faced with a newborn son of God unable to articulate his wants and needs, and she a new mother with no experience to guide her. Worse, she had to get back on that donkey for the trip home to Nazareth—bad enough while heavily pregnant, but trickier now that the babe was on the outside. She’d have to nurse him, clothe him, and cuddle him, all the while thinking how nice it was that everyone turned out to praise the birth but didn’t stick around to help with the clean up. Once they got back to Nazareth, they’d have been welcomed home by the community and life would fall into a new routine, and pretty soon the royal visit and Hallelujah chorus would have seemed like she had dreamed it.

No blasphemy is intended here. Whatever happened on that night all those years ago, life went on for the players as sure as it goes for each of us. The baby had a singular destiny, but what baby doesn’t? We are each born of divinity, each on a path designed specifically for the individual, and while few of us will change the world as radically as Jesus did, we will change our little corners of it, hopefully for the better but sometimes not.

I’m a day late, but the sentiment is no less heartfelt: Merry Christmas.

With love,