Have you noticed, in this modern and highly sensitive age we live in, that each holiday now comes with very specific fine-print messages about the social and emotional dangers surrounding said holiday?
Mother’s Day is the poster child for this.
If I could textually display the cultural messaging around Mother’s Day for you, it would look like :
“Happy Mother’s Day, but…
DON’T FORGET ALL THE SUFFERING TAKING PLACE IN THE HEARTS OF WOMEN TODAY DUE TO LIFE NOT BEING PERFECT AND MAYBE YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY FEEL A LITTLE BIT GUILTY FOR THE FAMILIAL BLESSINGS IN YOUR LIFE BECAUSE OF THIS SO DON’T YOU DARE FORGEHHHHT GAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.”1
Similar to this is Thanksgiving and Christmas, whose cultural messaging is very similar to that of Mother’s Day, with Christmas being the granddaddy holiday of couched well-wishing:
“Merry Christmas, but…
Don’t forget that for some people tHe HoLiDaY’s ArE sO HaRd due to life not being perfect GAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
Ok.
Let me just say this right now.
The holidays are hard for everyone.
There are so many expectations and traditions and unrealistic cultural standards of happiness surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas and most of these go unmet in very loud, obvious ways.
Our relatives are crazy.
These holidays drain our bank accounts.
There is never any freaking snow on Christmas Day LIKE THERE SHOULD BE.
And yes, some people experience a resurfacing of past traumas that make the thought of enduring another holiday season almost unbearable. Yes, the suicide rate goes up around the holidays. Living in this age, with all these constant reminders, we are all aware of this.
I’m not trying to be insensitive here—Christmas especially can be so fantastically depressing if allowed to be. One year, when I was a gypsy living in Central California, I was poor-as-all-get-out (a chronic condition for those living in the high-priced, halcyon environs of the Central Coast) and had no money to travel the 14 hours up to Northern California to be with my family. My family sucked anyway, so even if I had the money, I wouldn’t have wanted to go. I chose to stay and work and make some much-needed holiday pay while everyone I knew left town to hang with their families.
And that, my friends, was a very difficult Christmas. Honestly, I was like, I get it. I get why some people turn Christmas into a literal death sentence because I’m not even that bad off and this sucks.
So I’m not trying to completely poo-poo all of the hyper-sensitive massaging out there.
But, I think there is a mini moral here and it has to do with resilience and focus.
The holidays are not just hard for some people, they are hard on varying levels for all people tasked with enjoying them.2
This means the holidays require resilience and focus, just like all challenging things.
The problem is, we don’t see November and December that way. Lulled by the sentimental Christmas music and the parties and the pageantry of it all, we forget that anything or any day involving people, money, and/or cultural expectations is a fast track to crazytown.
So you’re about to have Thanksgiving this week and soon after that, the maelstrom of Christmas will ensue. And what you may not be realizing at this moment is that the hyper-sensitive disclaimers we hear about Christmas and Thanksgiving don’t just apply to the poor souls who will end their lives this year—they apply to you and to every person you know.
Because of this, I’d like to leave you with a quote from my book obsession right now. This quote is from a Greek word study book and he’s talking about Hebrews 12:23, which has to be one of the most incredible encouragements in the Bible when it comes to resilience and focus. A ne plus ultra survival verse, if you will.
This, my darlings, is the way forward when it comes to resilience and focus, whether it’s the holidays or not:
The word “looking” is aphorao “to turn away the eyes from other things and fix them on something.” The word also means “to turn one’s mind to a certain thing.” Both meanings are applicable here, the spiritual vision turned away from all else and together with the mind, concentrated on Jesus. What a lesson in Christian running technique we have [in this verse]. The minute the Greek runner in the stadium takes his attention away from the race course and the goal to which he is speeding, and turns it up on the onlooking crowds, his speed is slackened. It is so with the Christian. The minute he takes his eyes off the Lord Jesus, and turns them upon others, his pace in the Christian life is slackened, and his onward progress in grace hindered. (p. 214-215)
Just because these holidays represent really good, godly things—thankfulness to God and the gift of Jesus—doesn’t mean we can just cruise through them on autopilot. We will need the resilience and focusing effects of making Jesus alone our goal and expectation if we ever hope to gracefully survive this holiday season and help others to do the same.
Be all prayed up this Thursday.
Be all prayed up this December.
And see how much better things are when there is only one opinion that matters—not your opinion or the opinion of your friends and/or family—but Jesus’s alone.
See how much better things are when you are wide awake with the white-hot energy that comes from singularity of purpose while others are lulled into their yearly binge/purge of disappointment, discontentment, and scattered hopes.
The encouragement of Hebrews 12:2, when applied to the next 4 or 5 weeks, looks like this:
When your relatives show up on Thanksgiving, “looking unto Jesus.”
When you feel the pressure of gifts and time obligations and bad weather demanding your attention, “looking unto Jesus.”
And when you go to sleep Christmas Eve and you think about the hard things that have happened but also all the graces you have been shown that you did nothing to deserve, “looking unto Jesus.”
It’s all Him you guys. Freedom, joy, the ability to not yell at your kids or your relatives this season…
It’s all Him.
Have you noticed how this messaging never applies to Father’s Day?
Just for the record, I love Christmas—I really do.
“looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” NKJV