“After they—the Magi—departed, a Messenger of the Holy One appeared within a dream to Joseph saying, ‘Wake up! Take the child and their mother and flee to Egypt. And until I speak to you, remain there. Because, Herod is looking to kill this child’” (Matthew 2.13).
Can it really be it was just twelve nights ago we were on the verge of the Christmas season? Not two weeks ago stores were closed, the passing cars were on their way to churches or gatherings, and magic seemed possible.
But, now? Valentine’s candy fills the space where Christmas goodies used to sit in the store. Work is back in swing, all those things we put off to after Christmas lie before us, and the house will look emptier, darker without the lights, candles, and trees.
Of all the seasons to be so short, Christmas would have been last on my list. Couldn’t we have another week or two to feast on these old songs so rich with their hopes for peace and joy? Surely Pentecost or Lent could give up some of its time just so these days could last.
Maybe the topsy-turvy world these twelve days promise is too much for us to live within for any longer. It strains our credulity, doesn’t it, to imagine that the last could be first and the first—with all their wealth and celebrity—could be last? The celebration we spent Advent anticipating starts to seem a little foolish once the new year dawns, I suppose. Like a party that’s gone on just an hour too long, we start to look around and realize it’s time to grow up again, get serious about the bare, stark world outside.
Yet, there is a part that wants us to carry something of what we found in this season on into the year to come, isn’t there? There must be, I think. Otherwise, why do we return, year after year, to watch or read the story of old Ebenezer who vows, dancing in his nightgown, to keep Christmas all through the year? If we thought this was all for a tidy twelve days that we could pack up and store away, wouldn’t we laugh at such foolishness?
Because it is foolish. The message we come to again and again in story and song that this season is full of folly: the idea that hope for this old, broken world could be contained in an unremarkable birth, that the lowliest of us might be first to hear good news, and the night sky might hide a message that change was possible. It’s as absurd as anyone having the ability to say no to the temptations of this world or that death with all its tragedy could be overcome.
And perhaps that is the reason this season, unlike the others, is so brief. It is, after all, easy to hold onto these almost childish notions as the gifts are unwrapped, the candlelight flickers in the darkness, and the music sounds again and again that such dreams of change are possible.
But we are thrust into this world, just as Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were, to do our best to hold to the message when everything around us repeats that it’s illogical. We’re dumped out of bed into a new season, and challenged to hold on to the fact that love has a name, and all things are being changed.
And even when the lights are packed away, they still shine in each face we see.
Incarnate One, help us keep Christmas through this new year.