7 Christmas Dinner Scenes to Toast the Imperfect & Unpredictable: Christmas Daybook, 7
My Christmas daybook for these 12 days of celebrating. We'll be spending Christmastide with some favorite short films and video clips. Join me, won't you?
Watch: Christmas Eve was a whole week ago, and you might be reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly from the past week or, on this last day of 2002, the whole year. Raise a glass to all that has not gone according to plan and to learning how to not take ourselves too seriously in 2023!
Read: Psalm 46, 48; Isaiah 26:1-9; 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2; John 8:12-19
Pray: adapted from A Prayer for the Start of a New Day
Oh Lord, you who keep watch over my life: I rise from my bed this year by your grace, I face the tasks of this year by your grace, I embrace all the unpredictable and uncontrollable things of this year by your grace, I receive all the gifts of this year by your grace, And I hold lightly, and joyfully, the outcome of this year by your grace. In the name of the One who did some things but not all things in his earthly sojourn. Amen.
—prayer by W. David O. Taylor, archived by my friend Ryan Willers at his wonderful site https://occasionalprayers.com/
Do: Laugh out loud at a favorite movie today. Bonus points if it's a Christmas movie you haven't watched yet this year!
Just kidding about the bonus points. Christmastide doesn't work on a points system. ;)
G.K. Chesterton has taught my family more about the true spirit of celebrating Christmas than almost any other teacher. (I've written about these lessons here and here.) Above all, this theologian/social critic/blustery Englishman insists that we Christians learn the discipline of not taking ourselves too seriously.
Here are a couple of examples from Advent and Christmas Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton:
"You cannot be too solemn about golf to be a good golfer; you can be a great deal too solemn about Christianity to be a good Christian. You may put into your neckties solemnity, and nothing but solemnity, because neckties are not the whole of your life—at least, I hope not. But in anything that does cover the whole of your life—in your philosophy and your religion—you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth, you will certainly have madness." (Lunacy and Letters)
People are losing the power to enjoy Christmas though identifying it with enjoyment. When once they lose sight of the old suggestion that it is all about something, they naturally fall into blank pauses of wondering what it is all about. To be told to rejoice on Christmas day is reasonable and intelligible, if you understand the name, or even look at the word. To be told to rejoice on the twenty-fifth of December is like being told to rejoice at quarter-past eleven on Thursday week. You cannot suddenly be frivolous unless you believe there is a serious reason for being frivolous." (“The New War on Christmas,” G.K.’s Weekly, December 26, 1925, quoted in Brave New Family.)
And, in case you need more, here's one of my favorite paragraphs from Orthodoxy:
"Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good TIMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity." (G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy.)
On the seventh day of Christmas, I'm giving you the gift of a collection of Chesterton's reflections on the spirit of Christmas. Our first Christmas in Connecticut, I shared with our church a collection of essays and poems from the out-of-print anthology The Spirit of Christmas: Stories, Poems & Essays. You can download and print the .pdf in the link below.
p.s., I'd love to hear what makes you laugh? Leave a comment or email me.
Playlists for New Year’s Eve
*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1).