The Holidays are big around here, and I guess they are everywhere, though I have no direct experience with other places. But we've kind of been in The Holiday Season since Halloween here. Thanksgiving is pretty much "right after" Halloween - close enough anyway, and Advent starts the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Then there's Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve and Day, Twelfth Night, Epiphany, and that's when Carnival Season starts, taking us all the way to Mardi Gras. And that doesn't even take into consideration the College Football Bowl Season and Playoffs, or the NFL Playoffs and Super Bowl, or the Hallmark Holiday Movie season.
I had to take this overflowing "Holiday Spirit" into account recently when I was considering some needed car repairs. The shop that my insurer wanted me to use said I couldn't drop off my car until November 23 - the day before Thanksgiving. That was their earliest available moment. Of course, they didn't say this, but I knew that dropping the car off the day before Thanksgiving meant that no one was going to even look at it until the Monday after Thanksgiving. And it's hard to find folks who work much after lunch, or on Fridays, during The Holidays, and nothing at all happens between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day. Then, with all the Holiday parties and long lunches we all enjoy during the Holiday Season, I figured there was no way this shop was going to get my car fixed and back to me before January. So, I went somewhere else and got it done weeks ago.
But, the truth is that this Holiday Season, like everything else this year, kind of snuck up on me. One of my friends had to remind me a couple of weeks ago that this year was our 40th Law School Class Reunion - a big deal that had totally slipped my mind.
These last 10 months have all been like that - like traveling through one of our thick South Louisiana fogs - you know, the kind where you can hardly see the end of the hood of your car, the kind where the Bridge Police escort the cars across The Causeway, the kind where the ships on the river blow their lonesome horns. And this kind of fog doesn't lift by mid-morning. It just stays and stays, obscuring what I know is there, concealing what I fear is there, hiding what I hope might be there.
One of the things missing this year, lost in the fog in my mind and heart, has been what was always one of the best things about the Holiday Season - the eager anticipation. This year, there was no exciting run-up or countdown to The Holidays. Suddenly, The Season is just kind of here. There has been none of the planning, none of the talking, none of the singing, none of the laughing that used to make the days before and during The Holidays even more special, even more fun. It's been quiet around here. "And it's quiet uptown - I never liked the quiet before."
There are many Christmas carols and songs, but, at least so far this year, I've only heard two songs for Thanksgiving - "The Thanksgiving Song" by Ben Rector, and "Thanksgiving Day" by Tom Chapin. Strangely, each of them specifically mention gratefulness for having made it through another year. And I get the point. But, for those of us who will, with heavy hearts, gratefully gather around the Thanksgiving Table; for those of us who, technically, "made it through another year", it's going to be hard to see the empty chairs of those who did not.
There's a difference between "simple" and "easy", isn't there? One of the simple, unambiguous teachings of The Bible is this - "Give thanks in all circumstances" - 1 Thessalonians 5:18. There's no way to misunderstand that one, right? Simple and easy. Well, it's easy when life is easy. But when you're "working through the unimaginable", it becomes less easy. Hard, in fact. Yet, the Word still stands, it still applies in "all circumstances". It's simple.
But now, it's not so easy.
My deepest thanks to all who have held me up this year. And a blessed and happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
[And a special thank you to Lin-Manuel Miranda for the "Hamilton" lyrics references used here. Where would we be without the creative minds among us who help us express the unimaginable?]
Ambrose Ramsey | Pastor and Shepherd
