You can’t wrap your life in Christmas paper.
You can try. The question is, why would you? Did you?
And yes, I know it’s celebration time, so why so serious?

I remind myself that once there was only waiting, beginning.
Now we jump to the ending; so often trying to decorate the middle.
As every year, lights, colors, and noise are so loud to distract from the question:

Why this?

What story are we celebrating?
What story am I calling joy
when music fades and glow turns dim?

For many, this season shines.
And we let this glow convince us that
If it looks right, it is right.
We allow ourselves to be blinded.
We learn how to decorate grief,
wrapping pain to look less ugly.

I stop today, before bursting into the “birthday party”.
Because for many also, this time doesn’t knock politely.
It’s full-on PARAMPAPAM of lack, dragging pain to the table.
Empty chair that remembers the weight of the stories they used to tell,
or bring cold silence, where the only sound is ticking time and hope buried under the snow.

So I see as we trade joy with roots for joy with glitter
a whisper replaced by a chorus pumped through mall speakers
telling us to feel something quickly.
Joy becomes fast, a shortcut abstraction,
fantasy land before “life again”
instead a companion through it.

We choose joy as sentiment, not substance.
Mood over meaning, a quick break from the heavy, chaotic, messy,
sometimes unbearable weight of being human.

But there is this silent sound of ancient story echoing through all of that.
He did not arrive as sentiment.
He came out of the weight and into it.

Sentiment is weightless
at the table of ordinary days.

And it was there
not above the mess
not instead of pain
but right in the middle
that the Savior was born.

Not to lift us out of reality
but to step into it
to sit at the same table with grief
to stare disappointment in the eyes
to carry meaning in the suffering.

This is the tension we live in-
celebrating what has already happened
while still waiting for what is still being healed.

So don’t settle for sentiment.
Where there is joy, that still quietly breathing
beneath all this noise,
sitting at the table
waiting for us to pay attention and notice.

What story are we celebrating?

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