There is only one Christmas story that makes sense

I do love Christmas but my experience of the day has changed a lot over the years.

As an eight-year-old I remember lying in bed so excited about what the morning would bring that I just couldn’t sleep. The anticipation was so strong it almost hurt.

I always had a sense that somehow Christmas would change my life. Specifically, I felt as though I would get a present that would change my experience of life. I couldn’t have explained it in those words at the time, but I now see how strong my hope in Christmas to change things actually was.

Mum and Dad were extremely generous and I know they often maxed out the family budget to create Christmas memories… which is why the sobs of disappointment that were a regular feature of my pre-teen Christmas mornings must have been difficult for them to manage.

It has always been embarrassing to talk about the way I would get upset at Christmas. Even writing about it I feel uncomfortable about the picture it paints of my pre-pubescent self.

The reason I am writing about it now, however, is that while most people don’t dissolve in tears when they don’t get their desired gifts in the Christmas stocking, I have seen something behind the strong feelings I had as a kid that might be a little more common.

Four decades down the track, I look back to my eight year old self and see a few things. I can see that I was a kid who had intense feelings that I often felt powerless to control. I would be wholeheartedly happy, sad or angry and unable to moderate those feelings. 

For a long while I thought that having strong feelings was my main problem. I fought long and hard to try to control those feelings and it really wasn’t until high school that I learned to suppress my emotions and feel more in control. A large part of my adult journey has been trying to get back in touch with those feelings I learned to control.

It is only recently that I have started to understand more of what was really going on. The strong feelings were not the main issue… the main issue was the belief that was causing the feelings in the first place.

I now realise that my feelings about Christmas were so strong because I thought it was possible that the right gift could change the strong feelings I had about my life.

As far back as I can remember I felt a big gap between who I was and who I wanted to be. I experienced that gap as a source of pain. I now understand that the deep feelings I had about Christmas were actually about that gap. I was looking to find the thing that would close the gap.

I wanted to feel better about myself, and when I didn’t get the thing that I thought would achieve this miracle I found myself drowning in a deep sense of despair. 

As an adult and now a pastor I realise that while not everyone bursts into tears at the foot of a Christmas tree, many people feel the despair that I felt. They too feel the pain of the gap between the life they have and the life they want, and like me many ended up trying to cope with the pain by distancing themselves from their feelings.

Other people, though, are still where I was as a kid. They believe that they can change their lives by changing their external circumstances… and many of them are looking for the magical moment that produces the change they are looking for.

Thats why Christmas can be so painful… the popular story of Christmas is that it is a magical time when anything can happen. The movies make promises that reality very rarely mirrors.

The real story of Christmas is one that has taken me a long time to come to terms with.

At a time when the Jewish people were looking for a magical moment to change their circumstances, they got the baby.

The real promise of Christmas is not changed circumstances but “Emmanuel.” Rather than changing things to make life better, God himself promises to be with us, and as he is with us, he promises to show us a wholly different kind of life.

Rather than fixing the pain of the gap between who I am and who I want to be, Christmas changes both who I understand that I am and also who I want to be.

I would get so upset as a child because I believed the wrong Christmas story… and life makes much more sense, and is also a lot more enjoyable when I understand the real revolution that Christmas brings to my life: I don’t need anything external in my life to change because the God of the universe is with me and inviting me to the adventure of whole life.