The Space After Christmas

 It’s weird.

This space after Christmas.

For weeks, everything builds up to Christmas Day.

Advent calendars and trees and decorations and music and shopping and gifts and food and parades and concerts and teachers and kids restless for the Holiday Break.

Energy is frenetic with

Parties galore.

It’s hard to keep up with the flurry of activity

As the hope for flurries outside intensifies with each passing day.

And then Christmas Day comes.

And then it goes.

And we’re left with empty boxes and empty hearts as the activity.

Just.

Stops.

 

Religiously speaking,

I know that Christmas doesn’t leave us with empty hearts.

I know that it is precisely because of Jesus’s birth

That our hearts can be full.

I know that we’re not supposed to get caught up in the commercial side of Christmas and

That it should pale in comparison to the joy that we feel because of Jesus.

 

But it’s weird.

This space after Christmas.

The tangible form of God is not here.

He came and went 2000 years ago,

Leaving for us the Spirit who is always present,

Yet we can’t see or touch her and

Sometimes when we’re lonely and hurting because family and friends have come and gone

And the adrenaline rush of activity has crashed to a halt and

We’re left with whiplash wondering what just happened,

We need to see and touch something to know that it is real.

 

Yes, we are the hands and feet of Christ on this earth.

Yes, we gaze upon God’s goodness in God’s creation each day that we have eyes to see.

Yes, we have God’s word as our constant companion, but

Sometimes when we’re left in overwhelming silence because

The house is void of people but full of decorations that remind us of

All that was or could have been and

All that we have yet to do

Without the driving energy of a day to look forward to,

The bleak midwinter surrounds us and the dark envelopes us and we forget the hope that is

The Light of the World.

 

 

I know.

Christmas isn’t technically over.

It lasts 12 days until

Epiphany.

But radio stations have moved on and Valentine’s Day permeates stores and most of the world doesn’t know that

Christmas is a season,

That’s its essence lingers,

And so it’s weird.

This space after Christmas.

At least for me.

And maybe for you, too.