Christmas Is Coming & I Don't Know A Goose

My wife loved Christmas. Most of the time that we had grandchildren I was a priest and Christmas was just a crazy season. Christmas Eve was always church and then church with maybe a few moments in between, and Christmas Day was church and the the family celebration with me exhausted. It is funny but I never liked preaching on Christmas. It was the full church opportunity where everyone knew the story and the scriptures in some ways were pretty weak. It felt like a chance to reach new people but without the scriptures to support such a message.

Marsha got all wrapped up in Christmas. She created an Advent calendar that was the size of a wall with huge pockets for each day and serious presents in every pocket for every day for the grandchildren. That was followed by an over done number of presents for Christmas morning. The little ones, like in the picture, would get tired of opening presents and want to play with the ones they opened but had so many more to open.

At the same time that Marsha was preparing for this extravaganza, I was wearing an old beat up coat. On my chest was a big flapping cloth sign that said this is my sister's coat and over the right side pocket was a big flapping sign that said this is my brother's pocket. I wore the coat everywhere we went for the entire Advent season and when people questioned why, I told them that my brother Jesus was born poor and he had a heart for the poor and he still had lots of poor brothers and sisters. If they wanted to help them out they could put money right in my brother's pocket. I never had less than $1100 in the pocket by Christmas. The money would be allocated to ministries for the poor by a church group helping me decide what to do with the funds. Marsha didn't mind so much if I was wearing clergy clothes because people figured something was up, but she hated when we would go somewhere and I wore the coat while wearing civilian clothes. One year it was a really ugly woman's coat that was obviously a woman's coat. She hated that the most. People would often look at me like I was crazy which might be true. We did cooperate with one another in our different preparations for Christmas but our minds were in different places. I couldn't put on that coat every day and not think about Jesus and not commercialism. Marsha also always gave to the poor as well as family in her present buying food preparing way. How do you prepare for Christmas? Where is your heart these days?