How have you decided to spend this holiday season?1
Are you recreating? Spending time with loved ones? Taking up other hobbies or interests you don’t usually get to pursue? Some combination of all of these?
If so, that sounds delightful. It’s wonderful to be able to come through a year—however filled with its own challenges—and still truly enjoy the holiday season.
Due to the frequency of major holidays, particularly Christmas, this season invites us out of our frenetic normalcy like no other. And the more you can prepare for and gratefully accept these invitations the better.
Too Many Things, Too Few Days?
But maybe the end of the year has crept up on you largely unnoticed. Maybe you find yourself with more to do than the days you have left in the year—not to mention all of the special demands of the holiday season.
(If you’re facing this or other challenges, please take just a couple minutes to let me know. I’ll be using that information to make next year’s resources as helpful as I can.)
Wherever you find yourself, though, try not to let the season pass without pausing to look up. There’s more to life than your current slate of academic obligations, other work demands, or your next upcoming project.
You definitely won’t regret the time that you use to say “yes” to what’s most important.
Wishes for the Season
However you’ve spent the days leading up to today, I particularly hope you’ll take the opportunity that Christmas affords to join with “the few among the Niatirbians” in reflecting on and being grateful for the elements of truly lasting value in the season.
It can be a challenge to look up from the daily grind or “the rush” long enough to catch a solid glimpse of these elements. But it’s an effort well worth the undertaking.2
Header provided image by Walter Chávez. ↩
For the source of the video rendition above, see C. S. Lewis’s excellent essay “Xmas and Christmas,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 334–37. ↩
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