“Christmas doesn’t feel the same anymore,” my 13-year-old sister lamented to me as I drove her home from the mall on Black Friday. “Everything is changing. It’s gonna be different now.” I gave her a sad smile and nodded, because I remember being in that same place seven years ago, growing up too fast and realizing that the holidays weren’t going to be the same anymore. “It’s because you’re getting older,” I told her. “You’re not a little girl anymore, so it’s going to be a little bit different from here on out.”
Driving me home from the airport two days later, my housemate informed me that our neighbors had taken it upon themselves to decorate their lawn with Christmas ornaments. “I can’t stand it this year,” I said. “I’m so over Christmas.” She gave me the same sad smile I’d given my baby sister and shrugged.
“Yeah, well, Christmas isn’t ever the same after you grow up,” she said.
I’m jealous of the adults I meet who can still feel the magic of Christmas. To me, they seem as rare as unicorns. The way I see it, no matter how hard you try to hold on to that childhood nostalgia, one way or another, you will become disillusioned with Christmas. How can you hold on to the magic of Christmas when you have to hear the same music every year? How does the joy of the holidays stay when you’re bogged down in finals and projects? How do you experience the satisfaction of giving when your bank account has run dry? How do you believe that “there’s no place like home for the holidays” if home isn’t the same as it used to be?
For my little sister, home really isn’t the same as it used to be. Two of her siblings left for college last year, one is getting married in the summer, and another is leaving for college in six months. Over the past year, slowly but surely, she’s been saying goodbye to the family dynamic that she’s known since she was born. She summed it up perfectly: “Everything is changing.”
Most of us have already experienced this perspective shift at some point in our lives. I didn’t realize until the morning my housemate drove me home from the airport to start the end of the semester that even though my perspective has changed, one very important thing has not. Christmas is not about magic or joy or even gift-giving or being surrounded by your loved ones. I mean, it is, but it shouldn’t be, because Christmas isn’t supposed to be about us. Christmas is about God and Jesus and the beautiful thing that was done for us.
It feels strange to associate my least-favorite holiday with the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to mankind: the birth of the One who was conceived of a miracle and spent the rest of His life teaching and healing and loving until He died the way He was born—in humiliation and obscurity and filth—so that one day we can live in glory. Perhaps everything in your life is changing—I know it is in mine—but what hasn’t changed is what God did for us.
This Christmas, while everything around me changes, I’m going to do my best to remember that it’s not about me or about magic or about the nostalgia of the holidays. I hope you’ll join me in remembering the one thing that will never change: the vast, tangible, unmeasured love of our Savior Jesus Christ.