It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

They’ve put up lights in the trees in downtown Tallahassee, and every night when I pull out of the parking garage at the DoubleTree I take a moment to stop and smile at how pretty they are. It also reminds me that Christmas is less than 3 weeks away!

Like everyone else in the world (with the exception of a few curmudgeony Grinches and Scrooges) I love Christmastime. I love all of the exterior indicators that the holidays are upon us, such as the ability to wear scarves and boots and pretend that we live somewhere cold enough that they are necessary. I love seeing that tonight should get down to 30 degrees and saying things like “what if it snowed?” although I haven’t seen it snow here in the 11 years I’ve lived in Florida. I love Christmas Blend coffee and cheesy Christmas songs that give you that warm fuzzy feeling ….

…. And then I start to panic at the thought of Christmas shopping. Take a girl who hates shopping but loves a lot of people and wants to buy presents for all of them, give her a significantly tight budget and the overwhelming force of American holiday consumerism, and what you get is a near miss with a full out anxiety attack and then the sigh of relief that comes with online shopping….

…. But to get back to the warm fuzzy feeling. Call me crazy but there truly is something special about this time of year. And I think that try though we might, we haven’t been able to kill it with the crazy distractions we’ve created through the aforementioned choking fog of consumerism, or the creepy claymation movies that someone once decided were festive. I think that there is a sheer moment by moment joy and focus that we get to experience during this time because our Heavenly Father chooses to let us. What better time to remind us of things like Love, Joy, Peace, Comfort and Hope than now. We don’t have the capability to have those things on our own, but He gives them to us and He gives us the opportunity to enjoy them and extend them to others.

So take some time today to smile at how pretty the twinkle lights are on the trees and houses in your neighborhood. But, how about we also take a minute and smile at the people in your office or the girl serving you your Christmas Blend coffee? Not out of a sense of “holiday cheer” but just because we have Christmas because God chose to give us a gift a few thousand years ago that cost a lot more than we’ll ever really understand and offers us more Love, Joy, Peace, Comfort and Hope than we know what to do with.