Home

Michael Buble croons, “I’ll be home for Christmas” but the last line seems most applicable for this year. It will be “only in my dreams”. The song paints the heartwarming picture of what Christmas is, at least in our imaginations… home, which the song describes as … “snow and mistletoe” … “presents by the tree” … and most of all …”where the lovelight gleams”.

Most of us might agree that there is “no place like home for the holidays”, at least in our projection of the perfect holiday. In reality, Christmas is often a bit more reminiscent of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” where anything that could go wrong does go wrong and the participants are not well behaved or cooperative and, in fact, are more often argumentative, difficult, and arrive either too early or too late.

There can be the romantic notions of home as sung about by artists like Buble. Home could be described as it is by Christian Morgenstern, “Home is not where you live but where they understand you.” Or, perhaps you prefer the more realist take as described by Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you go, they have to take you in.” This year, this year, will be so different because even if we were ambivalent about going home, this year we can’t! So the adage for Christmas 2020 might better be “Home is where you hang your hat.”

There has been a lot of moaning about the disappointment of not being able to gather and the hardships that Covid has inflicted, but really – what makes for hardship? I guess it depends on your perspective and your life circumstance. Certainly for those who are facing illness and whose loved ones are struggling through the last stages of life alone or, with only one or two family members with them, this is extreme hardship. For businesses and restaurants on the brink of bankruptcy this is extreme hardship. For those isolated and dealing with addiction or mental illness these are very difficult days indeed. But for those of us who won’t get to have turkey dinner with extended family – well, I think we can cope with that.

This might be the season “To be jolly” but this year, above any other, it is also the season to separate sentiment from reality and disappointment from devastation. It is the season for honest self-assessment and being happy with your own company.

I will be home for Christmas, my own home, I won’t be at my family home with extended ‘kith and kin’ gathered around. On a day between Christmas and New Year’s my family will ‘Zoom’ and use that medium to catch up as best we can. I know many other families are making plans – meeting in parking lots, having hot cocoa around a campfire etc.

It’s actually not a bad way to celebrate Christmas. It is reminiscent of the age old story that we hear every year. A young couple far from home welcoming an infant son. Shepherds out on a lonely hillside tending sheep wishing they were home in the comfort of a warm bed. Magi leaving home to journey such a great distance to solve a mystery written in the stars. And when each character in the story from Luke arrived at the manger they found they were home in a new and different way.

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, has a great proclamation of joy. “See the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them as their God, they will be God’s peoples and God will be with them. (Rev. 21:3) We may not get ‘home’ for Christmas this year but God is at ‘home’ with us in the birth of the Christ.