The World According To Chris Brewer

I will be the first to admit that it really doesn’t feel like Christmas much this year. Chalk it up to a variety of reasons — Christmas music being overplayed at work, the weather having been so crazy recently, or me just not being able to get into the spirit — but it feels like another Christmas will have come and gone without much fanfare.

Growing up back home in Rainier, Oregon, in a small single-wide trailer in a trailer park (it was OUR home and we were proud of it), Jason and I used to get so wound up and excited for Christmas. We would eagerly anticipate the gifts of course, and for some reason whenever I think of Christmases past I remember that blue trailer and even though our family never boasted much, we had a ton of fun every year.

We used to drive up Fern Hill Road and across the backroads, eventually ending up in Rainier itself, looking at Christmas lights all evening. We would drive across the Columbia River and the state line into Longview, Washington and follow a normally predetermined route as we would drive up into Snob Hill and check out the gorgeous houses and Christmas displays.

Then we would all come home, watch some incarnation of A Christmas Carol and all go to bed. Then it was up early the next day where we would gather in the living room, have breakfast, Dad would draw out his prayer a little longer than usual to keep us waiting, and then we would open presents.

I remember some of the best presents I ever received. Mom and Dad bought Jason and I a huge K’NEX set, and we built a roller coaster with it. We couldn’t maneuver in our room but it was still wonderful. Then there was the year they bought me a subwoofer system with satellite speakers for my computer. I still use those today.

I was talking to Evin at church earlier this evening and she brought up a good point that for some reason, once you reach your teenage years, the excitement surrounding Christmas starts to dwindle a little bit. Then once you get your own job, you really don’t anticipate gifts as much because of the ability to get out and buy your own stuff.

Now I know good and well that presents aren’t all that Christmas is about, and there is no such thing as Santy Claus. I’ve figured out why my excitement has dwindled, and it’s sadly for reasons beyond my control.

In the past five years, I have only been able to spend two Christmases with my family, with 2004 and this year being those two years. In fact it’s the only time in recent memory my entire family will have been together for both major holidays. This is the sole thing I am excited about on Christmas. Add to the mix the fact Jason gave his heart back to Jesus and you already have the makings of a good Christmas, right?

And consider where I was last year at this point. I had spurned my family’s offer to live with them for the time being, to travel to Oregon to be with a girl with whom I knew my relationship was doomed, and I spent a very awkward Christmas with her family. Last Christmas Eve, I was trying to recreate some of the holiday magic by taking my then-girlfriend around the same exact route that my family used to look at Christmas lights.

How did that go? She complained nearly the entire ride telling me how she hated Longview, she was better than the people she called low-lifes that lived there, and somehow ended it all by using it as a vehicle to tell me I was wronging her in our relationship and it was all on me to save a relationship that was going to hell in a handbasket. We opened presents that night, and I gave her a promise ring. We all know how that ended up.

So this year HAS to be better, right? Technically, yeah. I think my sole reason for not feeling the Christmas spirit this year is the completely unfamiliar territory I am in, living in Missouri for the first time and a bunch of other things on my mind, that frankly can only be set in motion once Christmas is over. I’m not looking forward to the holiday so much as I’m looking forward to what is to come afterward.

But, even through all the craziness my life is going through right now and even though I don’t FEEL like it’s Christmas time, I dang skippy better recognize that this is the season we celebrate Christ’s birth and it’s not about any of us here on earth at all. True, he wasn’t born on December 25 and yes, some fat guy in a red suit steals his glory every year, but let’s think about it — the guy who saved he world was born in a place where dirty animals were kept, he had to be wrapped in cloths used to clean the animals just to keep him warm, and his bed was the trough the animals drank out of.

If ever there was an unceremonious entry into this world, that was it. Simply realizing that, and thinking Jesus’ entire existence was so that he could die on a cross and bear our sins 33 years later, makes me drop all of my concerns and realize what really matters.

It makes my current life’s concerns seem a little bit more miniscule. A little bit more irrelevant. A little bit more insignificant.

And all of a sudden, I catch a little bit of the true Christmas spirit.

As we go into Christmas over the next 24 to 36 hours, my hope is that we all share that Christmas spirit, and we can all be blessed by the remembrance of our Savior, Jesus, and the Christmas story. And my prayer is that we can all take our life’s concerns and lay them down at that very cross on which Jesus was born to eventually be crucified.

God bless each one of you, have a great Christmas with whomever you choose to spend it with, and you all have my prayers.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I love you all.