I had no idea a town like Los Angeles could fall quiet the way it has in the last three days. Friend after friend has driven off and flown away. Streets are thinning.
I can’t think of anyone that I know in town excited about the impending holiday. At absolute best, it’s an interruption. At worst, it’s a catalyst for annual pain. For most, stress and loneliness. I guess it’s taken 25 consecutive years of various Christmas celebrations to arrive at what I think might be the most simple observation I’ve ever had regarding this entire holiday.
First, the irony. The Christmas story is about God arriving on the scene announcing an evacuation plan from what has turned out to be everything the celebration of that story perpetuates. Pain. Stress. Loneliness. The story of Christmas is this: we can be rescued from all the difficult things Christmas causes us to feel.
I probably don’t need to discuss the irony or absolute culpability we all share in this bizarre twist of events. Let’s call it an epic irresponsibility of a great privilege and keep moving for the sake of time.
See, it’s not the pain or the stress or loneliness that I’m having a tough time reconciling. What I’ve really been feeling badly about is viewing Christmas as an interruption. I’ve swayed between annoyed, frustrated, anxious, and sad about what a pain this whole take-time-off-work-fly-to-another-city-where-it’s-cold-and-consume(!) interruption has become.
But that’s just it. Christmas should be and can only be an interruption. Christmas is, at core, the most scandalous interruption to take place in human history.
It’s the story of a great, divine interruption.
This year if you’re lonely or anxious or in over your head and Christmas is the last thing you have time or energy for, at least know this: you’re getting it right. This is the story. It’s a story about a God who knows better than to wait for us to have the time or the energy or right attitude to deal with him. A God who interrupts.
I’ve been fighting the interruption. This is my Christmas confession.

