"It's Christmas once again in Honolulu..."

One of biggest complaints lately is that "it just doesn't feel like Christmas". Why? Because we are in Hawai'i...and it is 80-some degrees out every day. Having lived in MD my entire life, I'm used to temperatures much more mild, if not freezing. That cold, to me, signals the coming of the holidays - a time to cuddle in front of the fire in comfy sweatpants, hugging a steaming mug of hot chocolate or apple cider. This time means the smell of a pine tree and blinking lights wrapped around and around the circular bundle of needles and smells. It means turning on the Christmas music and sitting Indian style on the floor, unrolling roll after roll of brightly colored paper, only to wrap it around the gifts thoughtfully purchased. It is a time to reflect on the past year - the good, the bad, the accomplishments, the setbacks, the lessons learned, the memories made.

So why has this year felt different? All because of the weather - and that's pretty sad.

Being in Hawai'i, the radio stations play their own unique set of Hawaiian Christmas carols if you will. One such carol goes something like this: "It's Christmas once again in Honolulu, there is not a snowflake to be found. No sleigh rides, no snowmen like you see on the Christmas Cards, but we've got a lot of Christmas in our hearts". I was listening to the song for the first time and smiling to myself at how ironic it was that I had just been contemplating the same things. And then one particular line struck me. I can't remember it exactly but I'll do my best to paraphrase: "Some folks say it doesn't feel like Christmas, you can't look outside and see some snow...I don't recall that it was snowing in Bethlehem 2000 years ago."

Then it hit me. For as much as I say "Christmas is about Christ yada yada yada", I realized I had made Christmas about what it felt like, not what is truly represented. If you think about it, Most of the Christmas items we think of with relation to Christmas, don't make an appearance in the Biblical Christmas story at all. The trees, the snowmen, the reindeer - they all have root in something other than the story of the Baby Jesus. Now, that's not to say that I"m going to boycott all things not in the Bible, but it does mean I've had a shift in perspective. Christmas, as it is today, (aside from being about Jesus) is what you make it to be. Honestly, it makes me sad to see the world take such a negative view with regards to the Christmas Holiday in general. What has it become? It's become a commercialized holiday that puts more focus on this deal and that deal that ONLY happen once a year. Shopping malls are packed with people trying to spend money they may or may not have to make sure the tree is fully stocked underneath. And goodness forbid that you don't get what you want or all tantrums will break loose.

Ok, I've gone on a tangent. Back to my original point. Christmas isn't about the tree, the gifts, the decoration, the shopping. It is a representation of the Gift that God gave us in His Sone, Jesus Christ. It is also a celebration of his Advent (coming). The Advent of the Old Testement and the Advent of his second coming.