A couple of years ago, my friends the Kings had me over for Christmas lunch. Lunch turned into afternoon coffee and snacks, which then turned into late afternoon chatting and yawning. I remember noticing that there were still presents under the tree even though Christmas morning had been over for several hours. The King children were young, and I wouldn’t have expected them to be so uninterested in their little packages.

“We usually only have them open on or two gifts at a time,” Hannah told me when I asked. “We don’t want them to get into a gift opening frenzy.”

“Frenzy” has often been the word that I would have used to describe the Christmas season. It is a time of intensity, with bright lights and shiny packages. If you watch Hallmark movies looking for “frenzy” or “intensity”, you’ll see it almost immediately. The colors are a little too bright, the plot points a little too shiny. Everything happens in a fixed, predictable way, which you would expect to feel safe and non-threatening, which it does, sort of. It also feels strangely frenetic, as if everyone is afraid they won’t be able to get to the next plot point in time. They rush around until the two leads finally get together in some kind of awkward declaration of affection which is meant to be sweet and meaningful, but feels so very empty that you wonder if robots were involved in the writing process.

Yes, I know. That is kind of the point of a Hallmark or Netflix Christmas movie.

But if the point is to get drunk on the bright lights and shiny wrapping for a day, I don’t want that. I don’t want the frenzy.

As I’ve been focusing on celebrating twelve days instead of just one or two of the Christmas, I have pondered this idea of slow unwrapping. I opened gifts on Christmas Day, and it was really fun. My parents bought me new baking pans, cooling sheets, and a very, very nice pastry cutter. Each day since then, as I’ve been at home nursing my sick body, doing something small and celebratory has felt like a little piece of chocolate. I drank a special glass of wine. I put gifts in boxes. I wrote notes to friends. I played music to remind me of Christ’s coming. I prayed prayers centered around Christ’s birth. Turns out that celebrations that feel like a slow unwrapping are a lot more fun.

There was a sense of mystery about it all, too, because I was not only contemplating Christ’s coming, but also how Christ changes everything by His arrival. Every ordinary thing- music, walking, being with family and friends, having a meal, breathing- is transformed by His unprecedented birth and made extraordinary. The dark is set alight by His glorious appearing.

I think this intense light is perhaps what all of those Hallmark movies are attempting to recreate. I don’t blame them for trying.

Celebrating the 12 Days, even in small ways, has been a really good and joy deepening experience. I know I want to do something like this again next year, although I may not write about it every single day if I do. It’s fun to share beauty with the world, and it’s also nice to have some space. So I may take that for myself next year.

Today, as I finished the last chapter of The Dark Is Rising, I was very moved by this line that Cooper uses:

…there was no break in the music that was in Will’s head, for now it had changed into that haunting, bell-like phrase that came always with the opening of the Doors or any great change that might alter the lives of the Old Ones. Will clenched his fists as he listened, yearning towards the sweet beckoning sound that was the space between waking and dreaming, yesterday and tomorrow, memory and imagining.”

I think a good celebration can also do what this music does for Will. It can remind us that we do not belong to this place, not entirely. We live in the waiting and the doing, the already and the not yet.

Merry Christmas!