Well, all I can say is, God smiled on the Rose Parade in Pasadena because it is raining again in southern California. I think we came close to our average annual rainfall in the month of December alone. If you watched the parade on TV, you saw a gorgeous day on January 1. Not so now.
Our Christmas tree is still up. I had every intention of bringing it down yesterday, but I couldn’t bear it, and so we have its light in the house for at least a few more days.
Our house glows at Christmas. We have a quaint little cottage that wears the season well. Everywhere you look it’s like a Currier and Ives Christmas card, so it’s always hard to part with what looks like it belongs year-round.
But the tree will come down, empty boxes will go back up into the attic full, and Christmas 2010 will be wrapped up for another year. Our little house will look a little sad for a while. But here’s the deal: it’s a good thing.
It’s a good thing for Christmas to be over, because Christmas celebrates the Advent, the coming Christ. But in fact, he has already come, and he is both here, through his Spirit, and also at the right hand of the Father where he is constantly intervening for you and me, which is a good thing because we need intervention.
We also need power to be and do what God wants for us, and that is the most important part. God’s Spirit is now available to us by faith, and this is the practical stuff that way outshines Christmas. This is the ability to love when you don’t feel like it, to obey when you don’t want to, to believe when you’ve lost all hope, to move out when you’re still afraid, to accomplish God’s will with your life when you’d rather sit and worry.
No, it’s good that Christmas is over. Christmas is kid’s stuff. Time to walk into all that Christmas made possible, even when it’s raining.
John Fischer The Catch 
I have a different view. The bare, bleak month of January where nothing happens, the decorations are packed away, is a reminder of the bleak world we are in. As it was said in Narnia, always winter and never Christmas. But there is hope. One day January (and Monday) will be abolished. It will be festive, entering into His rest, and into the Sabbath, where we will worship and serve the one who set us free.
But for now, we weep, even as we do what you said earlier. And if Christmas is kid’s stuff, then we’re kids. Kids are the only ones who would enter into God’s kingdom, and we become like kids. So as I love and serve even in these bleak Januarys, I look forward like a kid.
My “kid’s stuff” comment was tongue-in-cheek. It was a way of saying there is more of Christmas to experience every day with Christ’s Spirit in us.
This Christmas season a phrase that really irritated me was “Christmas is for children.” What we don’t realize is that we are all ‘children of God.” So in essence that is a true statement. Yet, bearer of that phrase have another hidden meaning.
Our world has the celebration of Christmas all wrong. From the middle of Novembers to Christmas, Christmas Carols, “Joy to the World the Lord has Come. ” He hasn’t come yet, then from Christmas on when he has arrived, we quite singing.
Christmas tress line the streets the day after Christmas like we are packing Jesus away for another year. In the early days the 12 days of Christmas were celebrated from Christmas to Epiphany, January 6. The days prior were spent in solitude praying and concentrating on the meaning of the upcoming event. We as believers must be the example. The day maybe over but the celebration continues! Christ is born glorify Him!
I challenge everyone t leave one decoration out till after Epiphany to remind us of the greatestiracle Emanuel, God id with us!
Okay. I accept that challenge.
Relax, John, Christmas is supposed to last until January 6 – Epiphany. “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” remember? We’re supposed to celebrate the birth of our Savior for a few more days! It’s all cool! Enjoy!
I am a youth pastor in Greybull, WY, a small community in north central WY. Recently our community had a young mom die of a brain anurism, a high school senior commit suicide, and a lady freeze to death. The last two were alcohol related. Please pray as our community grieves, and we wrestle with the all the issues particular those relating to alcohol.
Wow, you are walking right into serious issues this year. We will pray and hopefully many in our group will pick up on this.
Are you sure you weren’t in Davenport, Iowa yesterday worshipping at St.Paul Lutheran? Pastor Peter Marty followed the same basic message—reminding us that Christmas was the gift, but that AFTER the gift and the experience, the shepherds returned and told all—-We pack away Christmas, but then our work begins …….
Dear John,
I never take my “Christmas” down until Jan. 6th, Epiphany, hhich translates to Jan. 8th this year. Saturday, when I have less other things to do. (I work with home health plus take care of a grand daughter before and after school and a 3-year old great grandson who goes to pre-school for three hours each week day morning. Lots of running but lots of fun too!)
I am of the mind that everyday should be treated like Christmas Day, when everyone is nicer and remembers to coming of Christ. He will be back and we should be focusing on that arrival now.
As a side, I had the pleasure of hearing a message at church yesterday about our being the salt of the earth and we should take that seriously. We are salt so we can “season”
the earth for and about God/Christ. Be as salt shaker!
In Christ,
LYNN
I’m starting to like this Epiphany tradition!
I see some other people beat me to this, but I’ll write it anyway: Dismantle Christmas before January 6? How could you!? What a commercial, non-Christian view of the world that is. Yes, we do need to be part of the world, but we don’t have to succumb to that particular habit, of putting Christmas away too early.
I see others beat me to the punch in regard to leaving Christmas stuff up until January 6. If I had my way, I’d still have it out in June (I actually did that with a small artificial tree one year; I just couldn’t bear to put it away…)
I definitely like the idea of showing/having the spirit of Christmas 24/7/365!