Creating the Perfect Christmas…Or Not
Do you feel like you don’t have it together this Christmas? This season can be full of pressure: putting up decorations, getting the best tree, baking the Christmas cookies, buying the perfect presents…the list could go on, but you get the idea.
Sometimes we can burn ourselves out or guilt-trip ourselves into trying to make Christmas perfect. Or, at the very least, do what everyone else is doing with the same joy we think they have.
If you’re feeling the perfect-Christmas pressure, remember this: Jesus was born in the most imperfect and sloppy of circumstances. He wasn’t born comfortably in a hospital. Every inn was sold out, so Mary couldn’t even give birth in a comfortable room.
“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” – Luke 2:7
She didn’t have a lovingly hand-knitted or crocheted blanket to wrap him in, so she did the best she could and wrapped him in strips of cloth. Jesus wasn’t tucked into a plush bed; his first bed was an animal’s feeding trough. And yet, in all of that imperfection, Perfection had come.
If you don’t feel like you have it all together this year, it’s okay. There never has been a perfect Christmas. Know that in all the imperfections you feel, you have Perfection – Jesus – with you. That’s all that matters this Christmas…and any day of the year.
