Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year” but it can also be one of the more stressful times as well, with family to visit (or host), decorations to hang, parties to attend, gifts to make or purchase and wrap, cards to mail, and food to prepare – oh my goodness, the food! This week I present two books that suggest ways to simplify, refocus, and create a more peaceful and joyful Christmas. Hopefully this is early enough to give you time to put some of their excellent suggestions into practice this year!
“Christmas…is too precious to surrender to the various grinches”
Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas
By Bill McKibben
At just under one hundred pages – little more than an overgrown pamphlet, really – Hundred Dollar Holiday makes excellent points about common modern methods of celebrating Christmas and suggests a shift toward “less is more.”
As Mr. McKibben and a few friends started putting on “Hundred Dollar Holiday” workshops at rural Methodist churches, they kept hearing the same desires being expressed by attendees: “The people we were talking to wanted so much more out of Christmas: more music, more companionship, more contemplation, more time outdoors, more love. And they realized that to get it, they needed less of some other things: not so many gifts, not so many obligatory parties, not so much hustle.” With the limited time we have available every day – only 24 hours and hopefully we spend about a third of that asleep – Mr. McKibben points out the need to be willing to prioritize and cut out some aspects of our Christmas celebrations that do not help us to achieve the kind of Christmas we want to have. He freely admits that $100 is an arbitrary number (it sounded good as a title, he says); the point is to focus less on what money can buy for a Christmas celebration and more on what it can not.
To reach this lofty goal and to take attention away from the rampant materialism so prevalent this time of year, Mr. McKibben advocates a focus on several broad areas: peace and quiet, time, contact with the natural world, fellowship, and relationship with the Divine. We live in a society that constantly bombards us with noise and flashing lights; it can be difficult to find true silence. And we’re constantly busy, rushing from one appointment or activity to the next, often even more so during the holiday season. Christmas can be the perfect time to choose very intentionally and deliberately to slow down, make space in our schedules for down time, and engage with neighbors, friends and family. Perhaps most importantly, in a culture where “daily life has been secularized,” Mr. McKibben highlights the need to combat the ever-increasing emphasis on consuming more and more stuff with “a time for pondering, for reverence, for awe at our sheer good fortune that God sent his only child into our midst.”
He includes specific suggestions such as shopping locally when you do purchase gifts or decorations, starting family traditions like spreading birdseed on Christmas morning to share the good cheer of the day, giving gifts you have made or that involve spending quality time with the recipient (like a trip to a museum or an audio recording of grandma reading stories), and using Advent as a time of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual preparation. “The point is to emerge from Christmas relaxed, contented, happy to have kept this season. To emerge closer to your family than you were when Advent began. To emerge with some real sense that Christ has come into your world.”
Ultimately, he says, “the reason to change Christmas…is because it might help us get at some of the underlying discontent in our lives. Because it might help us see how to change every other day of the year, in ways that really would make our whole lives, and maybe our entire 365-days-a-year culture, healthier in the long run.” The way we consciously decide to approach this consummate annual celebration of love and goodwill can be a catalyst for needed adjustments in all aspects of our lives.
“The story of that first Christmas is what evokes the true spirit of Christmas most in our hearts.”
Good Tidings of Great Joy: An Advent Celebration of the Savior’s Birth
By Eric D. Huntsman
Paralleling the Advent structure, Dr. Huntsman devotes four chapters of his book to the four biblical chapters that tell the story of Jesus’ birth, Matthew 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2. He matches each biblical chapter with one of the major themes above and identifies the role or title of Christ that it exemplifies. For example, in the chapter titled “Son of David,” Dr. Huntsman devles into the first chapter of Matthew, discusses why Matthew traced Jesus’ genealogy back to David, Joseph’s role in the Christmas story, and the hopeful anticipation the Jews had for their coming Messiah. Additional insights are featured in informative sidebars – in this first chapter they include brief essays comparing Matthew’s genealogy to the one recorded in Luke and highlight Christmas music such as Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto” and the German carol “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine.” A fifth section pulls its text from Book of Mormon passages regarding the birth of Christ such as Nephi’s vision, King Benjamin’s sermon, Alma the Younger’s testimony, and Samuel the Lamanite’s prophecy, and links latter-day scriptures to the well-loved New Testament narrative.
Throughout the book, Dr. Huntsman seamlessly weaves scripture, ancient history, beautiful art work, family anecdotes and photos, musical pieces, and inspirational stories into an uplifting volume for the holiday season. And make sure you don’t skip the three informative appendices! The first addresses the context of the infancy narratives within the books of Matthew and Luke as well as the beginnings of the gospel in Jesus’ time. The second provides a resource for a daily Christmas devotional including suggestions for a scripture reading, Christmas-themed story, and carol each day – in our family, we’ve been using a similar one I developed a few years ago and the boys eagerly look forward to starting the “Christmas book” each year. The final appendix is written with those with special needs in mind. Dr. Huntsman describes the adjustments they’ve made as a family to their Christmas celebration to incorporate their son with autism more fully on a level he can understand and appreciate.
Back in April I reviewed Dr. Huntsman’s Easter book God So Loved the World . While this Christmas offering, Good Tidings of Great Joy, was not as paradigm-shifting for me, it adds a depth of understanding to the oh-so-well-known story of the first Christmas that will enrich your observance of this “most wonderful time of the year.
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* Disclosure: I received a review copy of Good Tidings of Great Joy from the publisher.
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On My Bedside Table…
Just finished: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Now reading: The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us by Sheril Kirshenbaum
On deck: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
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More on the holidays celebrated during the winter season next time! Come find me on goodreads.com or email suggestions, comments, and feedback to egeddesbooks (at) gmail (dot) com.