The Spirit of Christmases yet to come. This has been the most difficult part of the story for me to write. Indeed this was the Spirit which Scrooge acknowledged caused him the most anxiety saying, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen."
I started this post back in December; I intended to finish it before Epiphany and the end of the12 Days of Christmas. But in light of outside distractions I allowed myself to let it go because, I thought, "How can I write about the future?"
In reality, the reason that I've hesitated was that I was afraid. The story A Christmas Carol leads Scrooge through a radical change and new beginning that I can't parallel. My writing, my telling of the story, was leading me to a point of intellectual dishonesty. The life transformation that Scrooge was called to is so radically different from the life we live (I live).
I'm lazy, and it's taken this long to sit down and write that Christmas is a season to give up the self. God help me. We look at Christmas as the season to receive not to give. It is the earth that has "received her king." And in celebration of that event we have created some pseudo-religious season where the spirit of giving is the mask of a reciprocal receiving. I have to be honest enough with myself that I could not make it through Christmas without having my feelings bruised if I did not receive a gift from a friend or relative.
When I peer into Christmases past of my family life, Christmas was communicated to us as a season that was mostly about us children. But with spiritual maturity we learn that if we are to discover the true meaning of Christmas then we ought to approach the season as God did. God exists on the other side of a window; He exists outside of space and time, in eternity. He looks through that window and sees his Creation with all of its groaning. He chooses to pass through that window and make himself a part of that story. That is Incarnation and that is what we celebrate at Christmas.
Christmas is about giving, but without the expectation of receiving in return.
I don't know how to live this out in my life because it takes a persona that doesn't demand a gift in return. I'm too selfish to think that way. God help me.
You know I'm not the one to tell you what to do. Neither did Scrooge go around telling everyone else what to do. He just started giving. He opened up the coffers and made many people happy.
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