From the view of our front window and in the colors of Christmas it should be of those moments where idealism is realized. Of course depending on the fleeting external components of an artificial holiday sadly misses the mark.
Each year this innate hope for a white Christmas is fueled by the creation of expectations from someone else's idealism. In fact, there is a magazine called Ideals that specifically creates this imaginary world that could only exist in the pages of a periodical.
And yet each year I wait in eager expectation of a white Christmas and the joyous affects of shared merrymaking. Giving gifts; singing carols; candles and trees and snow. It all coalesces in a Christmas collage that has been carefully created by someone else.
So as much as I can control the impulses I set out to make each Christmas season my own ideal no longer dependent on someone's manufactured idealism. I set out to understand my own subtly pernicious desires and redirect them to the incarnation of Israel's hope that is the source of salvation for all. The Christ child who went on to live the ideal life of a servant--a slave--is my hope. More than the gift of everlasting life, Jesus is my Raison d'être and the focus of the idealism of all that will be fully realized in the age to come. Any celebration of Christmas without the foregrounding of Immanuel's mission is like a gift-wrapped box full of packing peanuts and yet no gift. Yes, I will quite pleased to see snow covering the dirty streets of Chicago and take it as a gift from heaven. But I will be even more pleased when my own heart's attitudes match the "white as snow" condition of my soul purchased by my Savior.
Merry Christmas!
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