A Portable Christmas

Seeing as how we have not yet reached Epiphany, another Christmas post seems very appropriate to me right now. We have traveled to Hawaii several times, but have always wanted to travel there at Christmas time. So this year we packed up the family – mom, dad, kiddo and grandparents – and went to Hawaii for Christmas.  In order to do this some things had to be different. Most different was that there were no under the tree presents, the trip was the present. 

           

When one is taking your family Christmas celebration on the road, it takes quite a bit of planning and thoughtfulness. I found myself sorting through all our traditions and saying is this is a tradition because it is truly important to how we celebrate Christmas, or is it a tradition because we have always done it this way. This thought pattern helped me determine what was truly important to our celebration this year.  So the “stuff” of Christmas we took with us was our Christmas stockings (an important tradition four generations old), a picture of the nativity that my daughter colored on the airplane and our version of a portable Advent Wreath, once again colored by my daughter. There was no tree, no lights, no extra trappings. It was our most important traditions, our Bible on the iPad with the Christmas Story and us together as family.

Attending Christmas Eve services is an important ritual in our family, but being unfamiliar with churches in the area we decided to do our own. Easy to do when you are a chaplain and grandpa is a retired pastor. We cooked dinner in our condo and ate it on the lanai with colored nativity and Advent Wreath with electric candles adorning the center of the table. After dinner we read the Christmas story, talked about the word for the day from the Advent devotional we were following and “lit” the wreath. We ended by singing “Silent Night” and Joy to the World.” My father reflected how to him our service was reminiscent of the Jewish tradition of family worship at the table after a meal.  It struck me as a very appropriate way to celebrate the birth of a Jewish child that was the Christ Child. I have been at many Christmas Eve services, many of them very moving and special. But this in its bare bones simplicity that focused on the Christ child due to lack of trappings held a deep, deep meaning to me.

Christmas morning we got up early (3 am) to drive up Haleakala (the volcano on Maui) to watch the sunrise. There is only one way to describe the experience of watching the sunrise on Christmas morning from the top of the world. Holy Amazement. The whole time as I was fighting to stand upright in the bitterly cold wind (we were above 10,000 feet) all I could think of was the first two verses of Genesis; “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:1-3, NIV). And also John 1: 1-2, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning” (NIV). On the top of that volcano with about 200 – 300 of the closest strangers, as the sun rose, it became reverently quiet. To see such beauty of Christmas morning breaking with the words of scripture echoing in my head was humbling to say the least and deeply holy at the heart of the experience. It was worth every hour of lost sleep and is an experience that will forever more shape my experience of why it is that I, as a Christian, celebrate Christmas.

That afternoon we spent playing in the water on the beach. The gift of fun and laughter was very much at the center of the afternoon.  As was the gift of humility as I attempted to bodysurf and provided great entertainment to my family and any watching from the beach.   

We may have spent Christmas in a very exotic location, but it was actually far from exotic. Instead it was beautifully simple giving me something much more profound than I could have ever expected. Christmas this year was something so much more long lasting than the few special trinkets I received in my stocking. It gave me a deeper connection to my appreciation of the Christmas story and the gifts of Advent of Love, Hope, Peace and Joy. It gave me time to deeply connect with my family, away from the distractions of the busyness of a home Christmas. I experienced Christ in a whole new way through those that choose to serve us weary travelers on the blessed day of Christmas. This portable Christmas in many ways, gave the spirituality of Christmas back to me in a whole new way. For this I am deeply grateful.