You don’t need to have your life together at Christmas

December 9, 2024

A reflection by Ashleigh, CatholicCare Community Outreach Manager

The pressure is real to have your life together at Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, after all, with the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer!”

Adopt your most cheerful demeanour at all times. Be merry and bright, even if you haven’t slept for a week. Make Christmas “magical” for your children, but when the relatives arrive, ensure there is no mess or evidence that children inhabit the dwelling. And when the children are overtired and on a sugar high at 4pm, apologise profusely to the great aunt when they don’t farewell her properly or express enough gratitude for her gift.

I’ll never forget Christmas Eve last year. The three kids were dressed and ready for the Children’s Mass at 5pm. The twins had napped, so I was hopeful that we would make it through Mass without any major meltdowns. The day had gone as well as possible with three young children. That was until I heard some wailing from the trampoline… followed by blood, tears and the contemplation of a trip to the Emergency Department (spoiler – no hospital trip was needed and the three-year-old was fine).

Our Christmas Eve plans were cancelled, and I was devasted. On any other day of the year, I would not have reacted like this to an injured child. I’ve accepted that injuries and sickness are part and parcel of life with children. But when it happened on Christmas Eve, it hit differently. I felt robbed of the magic of Christmas as I spent the night tending to my child…

It’s ironic, really. It’s ironic that Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas when, for the first time, I didn’t spend it celebrating. I spent the night doing the closest thing to what Mary would have done that night Jesus was born. I can’t claim to know what it is like giving birth in a remote location devoid of support and surrounded by cattle. I can’t claim to know the fear that Mary would have felt, not to mention the weight of responsibility as she brought the Son of God into the world. I wonder, did Mary feel guilty for not finding a more suitable birth location? I ponder the intense emotions that Mary would have experienced that night, and I can’t imagine she’d have felt like she “had it all together.”

The birth of Jesus was messy, beautiful, complicated and extraordinary. When God sent His Son to the world, He embraced the full human experience, which, funnily enough, was not a perfect one. Why do we place such tremendous pressure on ourselves to create the “perfect” celebration of Jesus’ birth?

Perhaps embracing those pangs of sadness as we sit under the beautiful lights of the Christmas tree is the closest we will get to an authentic experience of Christmas. Perhaps embracing it all – the beauty, the mess, the complicated family dynamic, the delicious feast, the challenging relative and the sweet sound of carols – is the most apt way of marking Jesus’ birth.

The pressure is real to have it all together at Christmas. Yet no one in the history of the world, not even Mary, has had their life together at Christmas.

If your Christmas this year is peppered with tears, an unexpected turn of events or difficult emotions, cast your burdens on Jesus knowing that He has walked the path before you.