Ready or not, Christmas is coming.

I slept last night with to do lists, not visions of sugar plums, running through my head. Christmas is coming, the gooses is getting fat and everywhere I look I see holiday work to be done... beds to be made, floors to vacuum, kitchen to clean, food to buy, presents to buy and wrap, decorations to finish. I listen to religious pundits call for simpler Christmas celebrations... remember the reason for the season spiritualists... and I wonder how do you do simple for eight adults and five grandsons? And if I knew how, would I want to?
Our Christmas holiday is full of coming and going. Because of work schedules and other family commitments, some of our crew can only stay for one day and night. Yet they still come. The gathering, the noise of four boys and one baby boy, the teasing and jostling, the flare ups and soothing, the bedtime baths, the shared meals using tableware and silver from generations who have gone before, Christmas Eve worship, the lining up on the stairs for the grand procession down to the tree and Christmas presents... all of this is a part of family in process. And family is the reason for the season.
I suspect the season of Jesus’ birth was not all that simple. Traveling when great with child certainly was not easy for Mary. The prospect of giving birth to her first child away from her mothers, aunts, sisters and friends must have been frightening. But, she had no choice. Travel she must as decreed by law. Joseph bore the responsibility for food, lodging and care for his young pregnant wife in a time when there were no Holiday Inns at the exits on the Interstates with Cracker Barrel restaurants next door. And when they arrived in Bethlehem, it was crowded with outlanders, tourists on the same mission as they, obeying a law laid down by those in power. No room at the inn just like Asheville in the leaf season. Simple? I think not. And then there were those angels and shepherds singing and rejoicing in the middle of all the confusion and pain, loneliness and darkness, God the Father’s version of a covered dish meal for Mary and Joseph. Family...
So I sing “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to us, O Israel” and “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” as I become a Christmas Martha preparing for a full house. It is not easy or simple but it is rich in love and meaning. Family surrounds us when we are born, holds us in their loving care as we grow and live, cradles us as we age and die. And if our family here on earth lacks a little in the loving and caring department, the Family of God is able to supply our every need. No angels this year, Lord, please, but I wouldn’t turn a cleaning helper away.