Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.
- Proverbs 4:13
Growing up, we always had a live Christmas tree in the living room, refusing to give in to the convenience of the fake, store-bought, permanent kind that so many of our friends had. Every December we’d drive out to a tree farm, pick out an 8-10 foot pine, Dad would cut it down, and we’d haul it home. For the whole holiday season, that tree would sit in our living room, adorned with ornaments and bedecked with wrapped presents.
But always on the morning of December 26, that tree was promptly dragged out to the curb for pickup. And once it was out the door, there was no mistaking where it had been—there was a not-insignificant trail of pine needles throughout the house marking its presence. A visible reminder of another Christmas come and gone.
With the holiday behind us—your tree may still be up, but the presents that once rested beneath it have all been distributed by now—the natural tendency is to pack Christmas away for the next 11 months. When you regard Christmas purely as an event, the obvious inclination is to regard it as something which has come and gone, something not worth thinking about again until next fall.
But for believers, Christmas is not just about the traditions of a holiday, but about the meaning behind them. At Christmas we take the time to remember that God came to be with us as a human being and we look with eager anticipation to the day when his home will be with mortals once again. At Christmas we dwell upon all we have been given and take it upon ourselves to give back. At Christmas we are given perspective about what really matters most.
To confine those things to one month out of the year would be spiritual malpractice. So as December gives way to January and the calendar flips from 2023 to 2024, look for ways to remember Christmas in March and June and August. The tree may be gone, but there’s still a trail of pine needles—don’t sweep them up too quickly.
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