It's a wonderful life, alright.

Our tree this year makes me think of
Charlie Brown.  It's a good 'un. :)

Christmas... was three days ago.  Like the kid that I am, I've been pretending in my head that it hasn't gone yet.  The tree is still up, the wreaths are still hanging, the lights are still glowing!  There's leftover pumpkin pie and honeyed ham and pretzel jello salad in the refrigerator, but I shrug to myself happily and make-believe that those things are normal refrigerator inhabitants.  Heck, we eat pumpkin pie all the time!  Psch, of course we do.  Year-round, in fact...

What if Christmas was year-round?  Maybe it should be.  I've heard all the sappy poems, all the feel-good proverbs about Christmas being a state of mind or spirit instead of a holiday or a season.  "Yeah, sure... that's nice and fluffy," says my own personal Mr. Scrooge, who has, annoyingly so, made himself quite comfortable inside the space in my heart where my Christmas Spirit should be residing. 

The truth is, I haven't felt "Christmasy" all Winter long.  Not even Christmas morning, amidst stockings and oranges and dad's homemade Danish donuts for breakfast.  Maybe that's why I don't want Christmas to be gone: because, even though it's done and over with, I still don't feel it.  I never felt it.  In desperate hope of finding "the feeling", my heart wants to fool itself into thinking Christmas is still here.

Trying to wake up that Christmas Spirit inside myself, I figured I'd do what every Christmas-Spirit-seeking person would do: I watched It's a Wonderful Life.  Gosh!---that movie.  Kirsten, Jordan and I watched it a couple of nights ago, and I remembered again that I think it's the best movie in the whole wide world.  Funny, because every year I watch it, I relate to it differently, and every year I watch it, I cry a little.  George Bailey: good ole' small town George Bailey with big dreams and a big heart; who has enough morals and character to save the small town and community he wants nothing more than to leave from; who gives up his life's savings so his little brother can go to college in his place; who marries a wonderful girl and has four wonderful children he can barely support with his dad's old Building and Loan business that he's bored-to-death from running.  Everything he does is for somebody else---everything.  Are there really people like that in the world?  Maybe there used to be, but there aren't anymore.  Why not?  What's changed?  Priorities?  Values?  Focus?

Eh.  No matter.  I wanna be a person like that in the world.  Like a fictional character in an old classic movie?  Well... yeah.  I do.  The thing about It's a Wonderful Life is that in the end, if you'll notice, George Bailey's problems don't disappear.  He doesn't go to jail, sure, but he's still stuck in Bedford Falls.  He's still stuck in his little office running The Building and Loan.  He's still---from the rest of the world's perspective---a "nobody".  But that last part is the lie that Clarence the angel helped him to distinguish: he's not a nobody; the world would be a different place if he hadn't been born!

It roles off the tongue rather nicely, doesn't it?  "The world would be a different place if I hadn't been born..."  It sounds nice.  It's a nice thought.  Is it true?  Yes... yes I think it is true.

I've been mixed up about Christmas.  About a lot of things.  I've been thinking that---with this year's Christmas as proof---the older I get, the less I feel it, and therefore the less I understand it.  But my idea of the "feeling" of Christmas is not the truth of Christmas.  Christmas is about God coming to earth in the form of a baby and being born into the life of a human---for our sake.  It's about Him living a human life among us in our world so that we might learn and see what real Love looks like---for our sake.  It's about Him dying, giving His life, so that we could live---the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate gift---for our sake.  Whether I feel warm and fuzzy on Christmas morning or not, the purpose of our celebrating it remains.  God gave His life for our lives, and you know what...?  I shouldn't feel warm and fuzzy about the truth of my Savior.  I should feel passionate, yes.  I should feel thankful---definitely yes.  But artificial feelings and shallow emotions have no place in my realm---in God's realm---of the real Christmas.  Artificial feelings and shallow emotions should have no place in my life.  And that is what I want Christmas to remind me of: life.  Life, and why it matters.

So amen to the squashing of warm-fuzzy-feelings where they don't belong, and to the remembering of life and the One of who gave me life.  No, I shouldn't aspire to be like George Bailey after all, a man who never lived.  I should aspire for the rest of my life to be like my Savior---a man and a God who lived and is living, and who made it possible for me to live.  Because, you see---George Bailey, movie plot and title aside---it truly is a wonderful life.  It's a life given to me by a God who loves me, and there's so much more to it than what my meager mortal mind can comprehend here on earth.  It's only gonna get better, folks... it's only gonna get better.  One day, the entirety of Christmas will be forever and eternity.