“I hope that we can experience at least a bit of Christmas cheer,” said my neighbour in passing. “What do you mean?” I asked. He looked over, “well, I really haven’t seen very much of it so far this year and by now I would have expected to see at least a bit of it.”
Christmas, even in the darkest times, is supposed to be a season of cheer. Or at least that’s what we hope for. We have visions of good will between everyone, gifts, music, and a certain spirit of hope in the air. Often, however, that warm feeling is broken by the sudden thud of real-life. Still, through wars, economic depression, and now a pandemic, Christmas has become a moment to pause and celebrate, not because our circumstances make it easy, but because we learn again where Christmas cheer comes actually from.
Christmas cheer often emerges to light up the dark. For example, the ‘Christmas Cheer Board’ of Winnipeg began over 100 years ago by a few churches in the pain of WW1, to give orphaned children toys. Today they deliver 16000 hampers to families in need. Hard times often become the soil in which good things grow.
Christmas cheer and neighbourly love is also alive in our city. Just this week I drove off from the gas station and someone waved me down to let me know my gas cap was not closed. They ran up to close it and waved me along. We had neighbours secretly drop off cookies, and another neighbour stops by regularly just to say ‘hi.’
Other stories of Christmas cheer are found in neighbourhoods around the world. In Rhode Island there were people who were putting their lights back up after last Christmas because they felt there was too much darkness in the world. In San Diego a man converted his old mini-van into an open air sleigh fit for 13 passengers, complete with plastic deer. He drives through his neighbourhood giving rides and playing Christmas carols.
In Collierville Tennessee this year, neighbours are stringing up 4000 feet of lights between their homes to create a kind of light tunnel for visitors to drive under, lighting up a whole street. In Beebe, Arkansas, their local ‘Santa’ is refurbishing old bikes to give away to children. Elsewhere the Somersworth Police Department hosts ‘Shop with a Cop’ where police take kids shopping for gifts that they can give to their parents.
This week Chestermere is coming together to gather food for the food bank by doing grocery shopping for dozens of families in need. Then, around Christmas trees and over zoom families will gather to share words and gifts of love with each other. It is the beautiful and warming hope of Christmas.
The dream of Christmas cheer is not found in pie-in-the-sky nostalgia for a bygone era that is long past. Neither is it found in a forced attitude that we feel we cannot sustain. Christmas cheer is instead the act of seeing another, and reaching out. What happens after that is often out of our hands. It is in our reaching, our offering, or giving, and our receiving that we experience Christmas cheer. It is a posture that anyone can try, and enjoy, no matter what great turmoil swirls around us.
I hope that our city of Chestermere will discover the potent goodness and hope that Christmas cheer can bring, and delight in reach out to each other, this season. Merry Christmas!
