Love Actually consistently makes it on my top five Christmas movies to watch before the holidays end. I just love Hugh Grant falling for the chubby girl and how Emma Thompson unwraps that Joni Mitchel CD only to begin to pick up the pieces of her broken marriage. I love how Christmas is its own character that brings all those crazy stories together. One scene that always puzzles me though, is the story line of the young man in love with his best friend's wife. The young man decides to confess his forbidden love and through a note, his message reads, "But for now let me say, without hope or agenda, just because it's Christmas - and at Christmas you tell the truth. To me, you are perfect and my wasted heart will love you." I was always confused by his statement that at Christmas one tells the truth. I don't know if that's just something the writer coined for the screenplay or maybe if it's part of British culture, or if it's just a fact I was left in the dark from. But I like it.
There's something about Christmas that seeps so much excitement, cheer, and coziness that it has to compensate for something. Sometimes I wonder if it is the truth, like Love Actually seems to suggest. So often, when it comes to Christmas, I'm left with the impression of deep longing for what's just out of grasp. We long for meaningful relationships so we patch the ones we have with greeting cards and gifts. We long for peace on earth and so we're compelled to drop a few coins in a bucket to join the jingle of bell ringers. We long for harmony and for a little under a month we're free to smile and tell strangers "Merry Christmas!" when the realities of the complicated tangles of Christmas for each of us is naively swept under the rug for that brief interaction. But it's beautiful, nonetheless. It gives me a glimmer of a future of peace and restoration. Sometimes I don't feel like that day will ever get here. Instead, I'm comfortable to patch up my life with Christmas tradition and artificial interactions, not that those things around wrong. But especially this year, I see where I want to hide in the merriment. I don't want to unwrap my Joni Mitchell CD or have to walk away from the one i think is perfect. But it's Christmas. And at Christmas you tell the truth. So here it is.
The is my last Christmas as a kid. I'm graduating college in a little over a week and I'm being gently placed in a very scary world of responsibility, starting over, and loneliness. This might be my last Christmas with my Pop, who is advancing in Alzheimer's Disease more quickly than I would care to acknowledge. There's a lot I dread at the thought of Christmas, what it means for the new year. I'm leaving some of the greatest people in the world. I know it's time to go, it's been a good run here. I don't want college to be the best years of my life though. But where else am I going to have friendships that thrive during the hours of ten pm and three am? Where else am I going to catch ducks and let them loose in the dorm? I worry I'll struggle for a while to find people who are going to be my new kindred spirits. Things are going to look a lot different -I'm okay with different. I'm just struggling with letting go of the familiar.
I'm not very good at being an adult. I haven't been one long and I'm afraid of messing up or being stupid. Add all the weight of trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, the responsibility of providing for myself and taking care of student loans, wondering what life without insurance is going to be like for a while ... it's hard to have peace some times. All of this is a fantastic reminder that Christ is enough though. He is my provider. He is my rock, refuge, shelter, fortress, friend, father, lover. I have more than enough in Him. And my inabilities and bumblings are not contingent on His plan for my life.
But there is so much more to this holiday season than my existential funks and life transitions. Christ has come, grace was made flesh, and I have a living hope through his life and death. No matter if I'm living out of a card board box or my parent's house or a New York penthouse a year from now, may my circumstances not mar the Gospel and its truth in my life. And that's when I realize, on this cold quiet night, that all is well.
Now the whole world will not be the same,
For love has come down and grace has a name!
Love actually is all around us.
Happy Christmas, interweb.
Bri
