Christmas Forecast

For the past decade I found myself in a very particular place this time each year. No matter how much I prepared for it, decorated it, sugared it up…Christmas was becoming more and more a bummer rather than a blessing. I looked at the commercialization of it by our society, did studies into the traditional icons we know of like “where did the idea for a Christmas tree come from?” and so on. No matter what I did each year my emotional forecast for the festive season would be another bitter, cold storm.

But a year before my daughter was born I had something happen to me that changed all that. Now I wish I could tell you that it changed the way the world views and uses Christmas, but it did not – that is obvious. The world did not change, but I did! So what did it? Well I realized something about myself that actually adjusted my life not only on the 12th month but also that other eleven.

I realized that I was looking for Christmas to make me happy! Well it never did! I would buy the wrong gift, received the wrong gift, forget to buy a gift, struggle to decorate the house, attend Christmas parties and Christmas pageants, but none of it brought happiness. Something was wrong and getting worse by the year. I had lost sight of my Joy. What I was looking for was happiness but not Joy! Even though joy would chase me down the same time each year, I would ignore it’s message.

I realized that I was looking for happiness and bought into a selfish lie. I never found happiness because happiness and joy are not the same thing. Funny we can have happiness without joy, but we can’t have joy without happiness. Hummm…I had lost my joy because I was looking for happiness. I was singing “happy to the World….” Instead of “Joy to the world….” When I realized this and started looking for Joy I found it right away. What I was looking for was there all along, I was just looking for the wrong thing.

The next Christmas I experienced joy AND happiness when my daughter celebrated her first Christmas. Never mind she was only a few months old and could not play with any toy we bought her; Joy was in our home and it still is today. Look for joy this holiday, and everything else will fall into place!

“Be joyful always;…” (1 Thessalonians 5:16)