This advent season has been a little unusual for me this year.

I’ve had a somewhat fraught relationship with the Christmas holiday in the past. In my life I have engaged in various attempts to find that “Christmas Spirit”… that childhood magic and anticipation of the most wonderful day of the year. As an adult it’s been elusive. I’ve enjoyed family gatherings big and small, in my own family and in-laws when married… I’ve performed in Christmas musical events of all kinds… Decorating… cutting down Charlie Brown Style trees from my own property or in the way past buying a tree to bring light into the house and display years of homemade or specially chosen ornaments… Cookie making, Christmas music, Christmas movies (I have always been partial to the classic Grinch though the Peanuts is a close second)… I’ve made advent wreath/candle displays and followed the candle lighting traditions and do love picking out gifts for loved ones. Yet I still felt like something is missing.

Finally one year in the crazy mayhem of a large family gathering I snuck up to the bedroom I was staying in and found myself on the floor in tears begging for something that felt genuine; something like the thing the Who’s down in Whoville had when everything was taken from them they still held hands and sang that beautiful little tune. Something real.

The following Christmas was a quiet special time where I felt a kind of answer to my deep prayers for the weight of the sacred impact of Christmas and why it’s worth setting aside a day to remember. For the first time alone in my little mountain house miles away from family and with most of my friends engaged in their own family traditions I had a beautiful quiet morning meditating on the truth that the King of the Universe refused to leave this world in perpetual darkness, and since there was no other way, he came himself. 

The people who live in darkness will see a great light. On those who live in the dark land of death the light will shine.

Matthew 4:16

I enjoy this newer tradition and in recent years find my quiet Christmas alone but not lonely has a simple exquisite beauty. I enjoy modest decorating and find myself veering toward Christmas songs looking forward to the quiet of the end of the year and along with a simple Christmas also some reflection on where I’ve been and what might be to come.

It’s almost like the quiet allowed for something the larger cheery gatherings could not penetrate. (Cheery gatherings of family and friends are not bad at all, family of all kinds are vital and we a made for connection… called to YADA. What I’d begun to feel is that the Christmas season was defined by family traditions instead of celebrated with them. Maybe it’s just my own experience.)

Oddly however, I noticed this year I haven’t listened to any Christmas music, I’ve been delayed in my gift planning, and something in me has considered and every time absolutely refused to pull down the box marked: Christmas decorations. I did bring in two little white pine little treelings from the property and I added some extra twinkle lights to the living room including the tree, but otherwise it’s been an uncharacteristicly vacant advent season – even for me. I was wondering what this was about. Was it inside me? Was it around me? 

As Christmas approaches only days away we have a winter weather system passing through that is extreme cold for us in Virginia. The windchill temps will feel like -22F overnight. Managing horses, that is concerning; and considering it’s high winds bringing the system through the loss of power would be very inconvenient for me, but devastating for many others. So instead of the last few days of advent feeling celebratory and joyous full of light, there is a strange mixture of quiet that comes with winter and cold, snow and ice along with an ominous concern, a potential for danger.

I can’t remember having a Christmas in my life that had such a… dangerous feeling to it.

Then the connection struck in a new way for me. Maybe one reason I have so struggled to find the real “Hallmark moment” of the “Spirit of Christmas” is because the truth of Christmas looks very little like the warm and fuzzy, sterilized holiday we have come to celebrate. Maybe we’ve done a disservice to the truth of the Christmas story by cleaning it up, making it a pretty tale with all the loose ends tied up by the end of the Christmas play.

As I reflected on the strange dark concerns of heading into Christmas with an impending extreme weather event, I looked around the barn my horses call home for now. It has a dirt floor which means EVERYTHING is coated with a layer of dirt ALL the time. And this month has brought cold rain so there is also mud everywhere. I sat overwhelmed one day a couple weeks ago feeling like I will always be coated in mud and dirt and asked my father: 

Is this really the best you can do? 

His answer both humbled and awed me:

I once brought a world changing miracle to the earth through a dirt floor cave barn. And I can do it again.

That shut me up pretty fast. But it also made me think. 

We see the nativity scenes and it’s so lovely: Mary and the baby Jesus calm and surrounded by animals that seem to look in humanized wonder at the savior of the world while the Shepherds bow and the wise men on cue appear with priceless gifts. So beautiful.

But there I was in the real everyday dirt covered place that animals poop and pee. It was way less serene somehow as I considered it from the dirt floor in my own life.

I considered the question over my own life about “getting it wrong” (I wrote a whole chapter toward the end of my book about getting it wrong… you can get a copy from amazon or by contacting me). Many of us (me included) as Christians pray for safety over travel and for all our carefully laid plans to work out so we can stay in our comfort zones and don’t have to struggle and suffer. God wouldn’t want us to show up and find no place to stay right? Wouldn’t I wonder if I had “done something wrong” if I showed up in Bethlehem and actually found NO ROOM anywhere to have THE baby? I would think I must have “heard God wrong” on this and “made a mistake.” The honest truth is I might have even doubted this whole sone of God in my womb thing was a crazy dream and I was delusional. How often do I hear the phrase: God wouldn’t do that… And I always wonder… have you read the Bible???

This – what would have looked like to me as a huge failure… was actually a plan. 

I can’t imagine Mary and Joe were thrilled about the son of God they were entrusted with being born into a dirty barn with only animals to witness. Today they would have had a better marketing plan from months back. Probably an online course of some kind maybe about how to interpret angel visits and encourage prophetic dreams to monetize… They would have been recognized and welcomed into a much better home as special guests. That’s what most of us probably think FAVOR looks like. I mean Mary was FAVORED… doesn’t a favored woman entrusted with carrying the savior of the world God-baby rate a clean “safe” place to deliver the baby?

No, apparently not. 

If I look at the reality of the Christmas birth story, it wasn’t a harmless beautiful nativity scene that we see lit up in front of churches and homes. Actually, this birth was part of a war. At the start of things, humans gave up authority on this earth when they decided God didn’t have their best in mind and they determined to take control and decide for themselves what is right and wrong for them. They were tricked by evil and mankind had been in bondage of our own poor choices since then. But God, though betrayed, wasn’t giving up that easily… not on the earth, he could make another one of those, but on finding a way to stay in intimacy (Yada) with us humans. He had a plan and began setting it into motion. This plan was subversive because the entire earth was in deep darkness, it was under the control of enemy forces, and God was going in. God himself coming to rescue us. Rescue me. Rescue you.

He had to come himself into enemy territory and bring the kingdom with him to anyone who would choose it. It meant doing the unthinkable. Becoming the sacrifice.

So the baby came. Not to a fancy house, not to any house. Undercover, in a place no one would expect to find the son of God. A dirt floor barn. Much could go wrong, but God was orchestrating every step even if the humans didn’t understand or feel comfortable with it. But he had the right people in place, submitted people, a teenage girl who heard what was being asked of her, likely considered the confusion and trials that would come with looking like a single mom in a shame and honor culture and yet she said: Let it be to me as you have said (Luke 1:38).

Contrary to most nativity scenes, there were no wise men at the manger birth. The star appeared and the astrologers set out to find the newborn King, but they showed up later. This is another part of the history I think is whitewashed over to create our lovely family friendly Christmas story. 

When the wise men finally showed up in the area crazy Herod was determined to find the baby and destroy him. He was so dedicated he ordered every baby boy under 2 years old in the region killed. Gross infanticide. 

This never makes the Precious Moments ornament collection. This is war. It’s life and death. Innocent children were slaughtered at the hands of the evil that had taken control of the earth. Even this was prophesied in Jeremiah as Rachel weeping for her children, unconsoled (Jeremiah 31:15). I am certain every one of those babies was welcomed into the arms of the King of heaven. But it is a gruesome view from here and hard to understand how such violence on the innocence could not be avoided.

Yet for the Messiah there was a plan to keep him safe until his time to suffer infinitely worse would come. The wise men showed up bearing gifts… just in time for Joseph to get the message that they were in danger and needed to RUN. Take the child and go to Egypt until the death of Herod. Witness protection plan. 

The very son of God goes into hiding. Once again I can only imagine my own questions to God: can’t you just take out Herod now? Why would you allow us to go through all this? Your son should be raised in a good Jewish home in his homeland God, why send us of all places to EGYPT?! Can’t you do better than that?

Instead he gives them the provision and the heads up to stay one step ahead of the evil plots and they are constantly protected. Jesus himself said a thing I have often found very strange in Matthew 11:12—

From the time of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. 

Is this the real gritty underlying theme of Christmas in some way? Maybe that’s why I have failed to find the simple beautiful Hallmark style holiday with expectations over lovely dinners and well wrapped presents and cookies and decorations to fill my longing. It never met my deep hunger for the sacred real story. The surface buffed up to a shine one has rung hollow and I couldn’t quite sort out why before?

Somehow preparing for this winter storm and reflecting recently on how hard it is for all of us to carry peace on this earth as a wounded person trying to love other wounded people brought a new layer to my view of what Christmas really means.

In the real behind the shiny surface layer story, Jesus showed up under the radar in enemy territory to bring a peace that destroys chaos and the grace that walks in humility especiallywhen wronged, but also carries the great truth that we are able to be called children of the living God. 

With his birth and life we are called into the royal family, standing in the very righteousness of the living son of God. That balance is always being threatened. Some stand on all the rights and benefits of the royal family while others never grasp just how honored and glorified it actually is to carry God, to BE his Holy place on earth, that we are heirs to a throne and called to rule under the authority of Christ. We are not sinning worms begging for a crumb- we are a royal priesthood… and yet knowing we carry that honor demands we not grasp at it. 

Instead Jesus tries to explain later that we have the freedom and power now to joyfully to take the seat of least honor- because our honor doesn’t COME FROM the seat… it comes from our identity. Humility isn’t thinking that we are worthless, humility is knowing we are a son or daughter of the most high God (apparently while we were still in the dark mess of our depravity worth everything to him) and in that security never having to demand the honor but instead offer it to those around us. 

Freely given, freely give.

This is a violent threat to the ruler of evil on the earth. And in order for us to walk as ambassadors in this kingdom we have to be willing to walk in honor, in peace, in love, in humility, in patience, and in freedom- even while violence is being committed. Suffering violence and being willing to engage- not in violence against other humans, violence to the kingdom of evil. It is an act of violence to stay the course. It is an act of violence against evil to be steadfast in love and kindness in the face of great evil. It sounds sweet and lovely until you are there in the moment when the knife is thrust into your own side with that perfectly timed hurtful comment, the betrayal or the unfair loss. 

Our only weapon in those moments which we must pull out and point directly at the forces set on destruction is to meet pride with humility, control with submission to Christ, cutting remarks with compassion, unfair criticism with a soft heart, and to always pair truth and love in all things. The weapons were smuggled in past the veil of the unseen world to us through a baby. Weapons that are promised that the very gates of hell cannot stand against. 

If you have ever been in that place, wounded and choosing to love instead of fight the surface issues, the humans instead of the deeper enemy beneath, you know that it is an act of courage and violence to love in those moments. I wonder if it’s actually in those moments when we are called to decide if we will continue to walk in the shadowy land of darkness or if we will stand in the light that has come to show a new way. I wonder if in those times of danger and struggle, when we stand in the power of true peace, honor, humility and love, is when we find out what the Spirit of Christmas really means.