Blizzards on Christmas Eve

So--a blizzard has hit. Nothing like this has been seen in this part of Oklahoma since...well, ever, really. Drifts are piling up, snow is blowing. Internet is sketchy; power is fluctuating (though, thankfully, we still have some).

Plans to go out to see a movie and then to the Christmas Eve service later this evening? Nixed. Plans to go see my sister in the big city tomorrow? Uh... Not likely. Our Christmas celebrations and family get-togethers will likely have to wait, postponed as we shift from "relaxed and eager" to "nervously waiting to see how bad things will get." And I'm quite lucky. Some people are apparently stranded on the interstate, unable to exit due to blocked-off ramps. Disappointed as I may be not to celebrate Christmas as I'd prefer, I'm grateful to be indoors and warm. Lord, help those in distress.

Now, if this were a different sort of religious-ish blog, I'd segue into some hamfisted comparison with That Christmas Eve So Long Ago. "As cold as we are now," I'd muse, "surely Mary and Joseph were colder--and they had no place to stay, no internet, no cars. Just a manger. And that's where Christ was born! Makes you think, doesn't it?"

Of course it does not. It's vapid guilt-by-coincidence. Yes, yes--the Holy Family had a rough time while I enjoy internet and home heating with snow blowing outside the window. But does this realization move me beyond anything except a vague sense of shame for fretting over an unprecedented blizzard? I often find such smug comparisons are more about the person making the comparison ("see how deep and spiritual I am?") than they are about any novel insight. It's the Debbie Downer act of Christian spirituality, relentlessly dismissing any reaction to a present situation by comparing it haphazardly to some Biblical situation. "You think this weather is bad? Read Genesis about the Great Flood. You'll be begging for the Christmas Blizzard of '09." Cue wah-wah music.

This is Christmas Eve, however, the end of the Advent season of stopping and looking and reflecting. It behooves me to do a little bit of memory work to re-imagine that first experience. In that spirit, then, let me risk smugness with this comment: Yes, the Holy Family had a rough time of it on Christmas Eve. In a strange city, crowded with out-of-towners, going into labor--all in a barn. Terrible conditions--and there Jesus is.

And isn't the point of the story not the terrible conditions but the miraculous birth?

If Christ is "God With Us," then the Christmas story as related in Luke works as a neat acknowledgment of the fact that, many times, where we are is in a terrible spot. Stuck in a barn. Stuck on the highway. Stuck at home. Isolated from reunions, from warmth, from comfort, from everything Christmas Eve should be or mean.

And there Jesus is.

There are worse things to think about as the snow swirls outside and the temperature plummets. Advent is God here, Jesus with us, wherever we may be stranded.

Merry Christmas Eve to anyone reading this, wherever you are. May Jesus be with you, and may that knowledge warm you.

JF