Right in the middle of the Christmas hustle and bustle, the cold I had avoided since 2019 finally caught up with me and forced me to come to a grinding halt on all fronts. My brain wasn’t functioning enough to write, I couldn’t go anywhere, and I was conflicted about licking envelopes and sending my germs through the US Mail.
So I sat under the Christmas tree with a box of tissues, my ukulele, and a beginner Christmas song book. From this close perch, I finally “saw” the manger scene set up by my son. He recast the part of Gabriel (the girl has moxy being on a thatched roof with no wings!), upgraded the stable to include a bed and a table with a lamp, and arranged Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the stable animals to all gaze reverently upon…
Peppa Pig.
A lone wise man is the only one staring at Jesus.
As I took in this modern twist of the Nativity scene, I realized I also tend to get disoriented around Christmas. I would like to say I am the lone wise man with my eyes fixed on Jesus, but I may be more like the other two I found wedged in a spaceship downstairs…reaching for the shiny Christmas star instead of the one it came to illuminate.
That morning I was on the phone with customer service at Shutterfly. They have had a rough season. Besides the difficulty getting packages to people on time, their entire website went down in the height of all the ordering, preventing people from uploading photos and completing projects.
The man on the other end of the line was so apologetic. According to tracking information, the latte mug I ordered for my mother-in-law made it to our local post office and then started drifting away again. The man on the phone said he did not have much confidence it would make it to me and offered to reorder it. Then he apologized again–it wouldn’t make it to me until the 29th.
So I said, no worries! It doesn’t have to get here on Christmas. I will just wrap up a picture for her to open on Christmas and then bring it to her for New Year’s. He thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He told me his daughter wanted a puppy so he was going to wrap up a picture for her for Christmas. I had to clarify that the Christmas Loophole only works if you actually intend on eventually giving the gift.
We have all had a rough couple of years. I say we need an extra dose of grace. When gifts don’t arrive in time for Christmas and things on a list go unchecked, survival rate is 100%.
If you think about it, the Nativity scene is a PSA for realigning our Christmas priorities. The Shepherds left work early. The wise men arrived 12 days late with their gifts. Mary and Joseph didn’t worry about cleaning up the stable or making it appear other than what it was…they just let people come and be. Being near Jesus was more important than all these other distractions. Jesus Himself was just a baby—the ultimate example of not striving and just being… and He saved the world.
Jesus came to elevate the status of relationship over striving, so I really think it is okay to let things drop, to use the loophole. Stop striving for people and simply be with them—stop striving for God and just be with Him.