Today I heard a pastor talking about how over-blown our Christmas celebrations have become. We are so into shopping and decorating and singing Christmas carols that we have no patience for Advent. We don’t want to take time to quiet our hearts and think about what it means to get ready for the coming of Christ. We want the cute baby Jesus in the Christmas Pageant, but we don’t want to think about making our lives something that the grown-up Jesus will want to see when He returns in power and majesty on that last day. We pastors talked about the fact that Christmas is, actually, a minor Christian holiday. Jesus’ ministry, his teaching, his crucifixion and his glorious resurrection are given a lot more attention in the Bible.

I know that Easter is the more important Christian holiday, but I must confess that I love Christmas!!!!!! Good Friday is serious and dreadful. I hate to think on it. Easter morning is so good, I can hardly imagine it. Christmas is easy. Christmas is fun. Christmas is God’s golden sunny gift to us in the middle of our dark cold winter.

I love the baby Jesus. I want to stay for a while in Christmas because a baby is hope you can cradle to your chest. I love Christmas carols because they sing promises of love, reminding me of those Mary moments in my life when it seems truth and love are about to burst forth and change the world.

My prayer for this congregation is that we lay claim to real Christmas. (Without making others feel bad because they don’t get it. Please don’t chastise people who say "Happy holidays" or judge those who don’t go to church. Pray that someday everyone will "get it." For now, pray, invite others to church and be a shining example of unconditional love.)

My prayer for us is that we hear Mary’s song and hear it as a radical claim awakening us for the sake of revolution, to grab hold of the Kingdom of God already present amongst us. I pray we refuse to accept the status quo and be the people of hope that we were created to be.

Jesus is the incarnation of love. I pray that when we hear of families who don’t have enough to eat or children without warm clothes in our town we say, "NO MORE." I pray that when we hear of elderly or strangers who have no one to visit with we make ourselves available for holy fellowship.

I pray that this Advent and Christmas season will be more than sentimentality. I hope we dwell so deeply in the incarnation of Christ’s love that materialism and consumerism are a distant clamour that has no claim on us. I pray that the hope and tender love that is Christmas will spur us to make changes that will last our whole lives.

My prayer for my church family is that you have the happiest and most meaningful Christmas you have ever had and that your new year is filled with love and surprises.