(Above are outtakes from Kuykendall family Christmas Card pictures from the last four years.)

(I had a really touching reflection on family and friends and eggnog and puppies almost finished, but it was completely false perhaps exaggerated.  I wrote this instead.)

Honestly, the feeling I associate with Christmas is stress.  Every year the days get shorter and a host of additional tasks are added to my already busy life.  There are presents to be bought, parties to attend, Christmas Card pictures to take, arguments to have over the taking of the Christmas Card pictures (that may just be my family – Christmas Cards are a big deal here), and innumerable obligations required to uphold my particular end of the social contract.

Specific images:

• • My father hand-addressing and stuffing envelopes to send Christmas Cards to family friends (in retrospect, I probably could have should have helped).

   

  • Studying for exams – be they high school, college, or law school – while running out of time to find presents (Thank you, Amazon Prime)

   

  • My brother and I rubbing elbows with other shoppers, eating Manchu Wok for lunch at Westshore Mall on Christmas Eve

   

  • Running around Church ten minutes after the Christmas Eve service has started, looking for more folding chairs to put in the aisle so everyone can have a seat

   

  • Every year I feel like a bad person because these memories are the first to come to mind.  (I really tried to work a “Scrooge” reference into that sentence, but I just couldn’t make it work).  A couple of years ago, though, I realized two (somewhat-related) things:

     

    • (1) I only feel this stress because I have so many people in this world that I care about, and who care about me.  This is the time of the year that We – outside of religious belief/faith/commitment – set aside time, money, and energy to tell the people that we care about they matter.  If wanting to do that well is stressful, I’m ok with that.

     

    • (2) The iconic image of the Christmas is the creche, the manger scene, the congregation singing Silent Night by candlelight.  But the Christmas story itself is all about things going completely wrong, nobody doing what they are supposed to do, people out of place and not enough room for anybody.  It culminates with a new baby (not clean), a post-partum mother, a new dad, a bunch of shepherds, presumably their sheep, a bunch of barnyard animals, and possibly a kid with a drum (though I’m unclear on that part) in a cramped, musty, cave filled with straw and smelling like, well, a barn.  (Luke 2:15-17).  And the shepherds are so happy about it, they go tell everyone else in town.

   

  • That’s the image that I try to call to mind during this season.  It makes waiting in mall traffic seem slightly more significant.

See 2009′s Eleven Pipers Piping: Janie