As we get towards the end of Christmas week, even though we may have more festivities, whether New Year’s Eve parties or simply meeting with friends over the coming days to look forward to, thoughts begin to turn to the end of next week when many people will be taking down their festive decorations and packing them away for another year.
I don’t know about you but I find that time quite difficult. I’ve been affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for some years and I find the lack of daylight during the winter months can cause depression.
One of the ways in which I combat it, is to look forward to December, when so many homes have light displays in their gardens as well as indoors and, in particular, to decorating our Christmas tree. I make sure there are lots of lights on it as well as over one hundred and twenty gold-coloured baubles and other decorations, to bounce the light around.
However, the removal of the decorations and the tree coincides with the removal of exterior lights too: the insides and outsides of homes will be much darker over the coming weeks. Though I haven’t been affected by SAD this winter nearly as much as in recent years, I know that the next month might prove to be a challenging time in that respect.
When I take the Christmas tree down, one thing which frustrates me every year is that however slowly and carefully I think I’m doing it, I find that, inevitably, once all the storage boxes have been filled and shut away in the loft, as the tree is taken outside, I’ll find one decoration or trim left on it. Hidden away deep in the branches will be one tiny bauble which I’ve overlooked.
Then I have to decide what to do about that. Should I go back into the loft and find a ‘safe’ place for that bauble to rest in or could I find somewhere else for it? Somewhere that, right now, seems accessible but which I know I’ll forget about before next December? Perhaps somewhere where I’ll come across it regularly, even though it might seem out of place during the rest of the year? Where should that tiny, insignificant remnant of Christmas stay during the next twelve months?
Yet, by far the most important post-Christmas decision I need to make as the decorations come down and the lights start to fade, is where I’m going to keep the smallest, yet also the greatest, gift of the season: the born-as-a-baby Jesus.
Will he be forgotten and stay hidden and overlooked among the other branches of my life? Or, when I notice him as I prepare for the tasks and challenges of 2024, will I put him in a safe but remote ‘lofty’ place to be checked on occasionally when I happen to be in that space? Or will I give him a more accessible space where he might be easily noticed but could be ignored just as easily?
No, I’m going to pick up and carry that tiny, shiny bauble, that greatest gift of Jesus’s love, with me, within me, every day of the new year and all my years. I pray that it will grow and shine out to be shared with other people, lightening their dark times too.
If you find one bauble or decoration left when you think you’ve packed them all away, think of it as a reminder that the light of Christmas, the light of the world, Jesus is with us always, whether we feel him very close to us or whether he seems to be packed away somewhere for a time. He will always come back to remind us that he’s with us still.
May we each carry his light be with us as we go into the new year.
Thank you for reading my blog during 2023 and I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you in 2024.
Sherrian
Sunlight Through the Shadows 