Merry Christmas Everyone

To anyone who reads this that doesn't celebrate Christmas, happy whatever you do celebrate.  Happy Christmahannakwanzmadon.  I don't take offense if you tell me happy holidays or even happy Festivus (I'm always up for a good grievance airing or even some feats of strength).  I hope you won't take offense that I celebrate Christmas.  Specifically, I celebrate the birth of the Christ child.  I know that historically he was pretty much certainly not born on December 25, or any time in December for that matter.  I still celebrate it then, just like Christians have for hundreds of years.  The Protestant church doesn't believe Christ arose every Sunday either, but we celebrate a mini-Easter every single week.  That's why we have church on Sunday instead of the Jewish Sabbath, which falls on what we now call Saturday.  In case you wanted to know.  Anyway...

Someone I follow on Twitter was, oddly enough, complaining about how people complain about little things too much.  I used to feel the same way.  Don't get me wrong--there are a lot of whiners out there who have first world problems, like their wallet's too small for their fifties and their ruby slippers rub their pinky toes. But the last year has taught me that I need to be careful about judging someone's complaining, for just because it doesn't seem big to me doesn't mean it's not genuinely, life-changing, what-am-I-going-to-do-now, things-will-never-be-the-same-again big to someone else.  Yes, big picture, it might be a minor issue, but it's sometimes hard to see the big picture when you're mired in your little dark corner of it.

And it could be that the grievance we're airing on Facebook might be the only one everyone sees because it's the only one we have the courage to share with the world.  I may be complaining about traffic because I can't tell everyone what's really going on in my life.  It's too hard. I can barely talk about it with my family and a few close friends, so I'm certainly not going to air it on Facebook.  So I hope you'll excuse me when I have a little harder time than usual handling how long it took to get to the mall.

I'm not saying these things to try to get people to feel sorry for me.  I know God loves me and a whole lot of people also love me and things will work out over time.  What I'm saying is let's try to have a little grace for each other.  And what better time to be reminded than the time of year we Christians celebrate Advent, when the God of the universe became like us, in order to share the ultimate Grace.

Merry Christmas everyone.