PRESCRIPTION FOR OVERCOMING HOLIDAY STRESS
The Christmas season should bring us joy and warm our souls, but more often than not, it brings heartburn and stress, headache and depression. Holiday stress will make this most wonderful time of year a miserable mess, if you let it.
In spite of Holiday Stress, Christmas holds the potential to fulfill and renew. Christmas brings people together; it makes us focus on Christian values.
Christmas is a time for family traditions and rituals. These rituals give us a sense of continuity and stability. They allow us a way to express our love for one another.
Christmas is a time to reflect on the greatest gift of all time ? the gift of salvation ? that precious gift given by our Heavenly Father in the form of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. Christmas is about salvation!
The stresses that plague people this time of year are rooted in three basic sources: TIME (getting everything done), MONEY (paying for it), and EMOTIONS (painful memories that resurface and family conflicts.) To illustrate this, I have compiled a list of things that can go wrong at Christmas. Most of these come from personal experience.
I call it: MURPHY’S SPECIAL LAWS FOR THE HOLIDAYS:
1. The time it takes to find a parking place is inversely proportional to the amount of time you have to spend.
2. The other line always moves faster ? and if you don’t believe it, change lines and see what happens.
3. Unassembled toys take three times as long to put together than you planned because the guy who wrote the instructions speaks 3 languages English not being one of them, and there is always a pile of nuts, bolts and washers left over.
4. When you return to the store to buy the gift that your husband, wife or child showed you the previous day, it’s gone and there are no more in stock.
5. The star singer in the Christmas musical comes down with laryngitis the day before the performance.
6. If you get something in the mail that looks like a fruitcake, chances are it is ? I recommend that you repackage it and mail it to your favorite politician
7. Someone always forgets the rolls in the oven at Christmas dinner.
8. If you hear a loud crashing noise, your Christmas tree is probably lying in a prone position.
9. If the toilet is going to break or the sink plug up, it will always happen while everyone is at your house celebrating.
10. You gather your family around the hearth and light the Yule Log only to discover that you forget to open the flue.
11. Finally if Clarance the angel from the movie "It’s a Wonderful Life" shows up, you’re in for an interesting day.
I know that you all have had similar experiences, and we could probably make a ten-page list of things that go wrong at Christmas. The point is that THINGS WILL GO WRONG! They always have and they always will. What makes all the difference in the world, is whether you let it affect you.
Holiday Stress is nothing new; it’s been around a long time. Let’s go back to the original Christmas and explore the possibility that Holiday Stress was at work even then.
Angels start showing up and scaring the daylights out of people.
Mary is pregnant with Jesus out of wedlock.
Joseph wants to break off the engagement with Mary
Its census and tax time
On the road with a pregnant woman ? no fast food, no rest stops, no air conditioning, and no comfort. By the time they arrived in Bethlehem she was probably ready to kill Joseph and then they couldn’t even find a motel vacancy.
Delivery in the livery (I can visualize Joseph pacing outside the manger while the midwife delivered Jesus) (Joseph was so he would have passed out cigars, but they hadn’t been invented yet.)
Unexpected guests arrive (When the shepherds came, Mary was probably so exhausted after labor and delivery that she didn’t care what the manger looked like. The important thing was that people came to share in the joy of her newborn son.)
And then there was the customary circumcision ? I can just imagine Mary telling Joseph, "there’s no way I’m riding back to Nazareth on a donkey with a cranky baby who has just been circumcised." (It doesn’t end here)
On the 3rd Christmas More unexpected guests arrive (the Magi, uninvited foreign dignitaries) Death threats by King Herod. Another angel appears to Joseph in a dream and says, "head for the border son." They escape into Egypt, with few possessions, no family, no home and no American Express.
If you ask me, things got pretty hectic in the lives of Joseph and Mary when Jesus showed up. But with a little divine help they endured the hardships and went on with life.
Here is a prescription for overcoming Holiday Stress:
1. Pray, pray, and pray some more. We all need divine help, and the best way to get it is to ask through prayer. The Bible tells us that we have not because we ask not. So ASK!
Set priorities (decide what’s important and what’s not ? having a spotless manger isn’t nearly as important as being hospitable and sharing the joy of Christmas with others.)
3. Understand that something will go wrong, but it’s all right ? it’s part of the Christmas experience.
4. Use common sense and plan ahead (buy your gifts early, plan your meals so your husband only needs to make 3 last minute trips to the grocery store. Book your reservations well in advance and pad your travel time with extra days on both ends of the trip.) Planning in advance will save you much grief.
5. Simplify your life (ask yourself, "is this really necessary? What difference will it make in the eternal scheme of things?"
6. Celebrate Christmas in ways that are truly meaningful to you personally.
? Use and enjoy the commercial trappings of Christmas
? But more than anything, enjoy the gift of light and love given to us in the baby Jesus ? and let that light of love permeate your family celebrations.
? Remember ? Christmas is the celebrating of the 1st coming of Christ, but it should also be a celebration of looking forward to his 2nd coming.
7. When trouble comes your way this Holiday Season, and it will, take the high road ? give the problem to God in prayer and leave it there ? don’t take it with you when you say Amen.
Romans 5:1-5 "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have a peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
PRAYER: O Lord our savior, who brings peace to our troubled hearts and salvation to lost souls, help us to overcome the trials and tribulations of our daily lives, and especially during this holy advent season ? reduce our stress, and when stress does come our way, help us to deliver our troubles to You ? let us not internalize the stress that pounds against the shoreline of our hearts, but let us rest in You and enjoy Your peace ? the peace that passes all understanding, and let us radiate the light of love and the glow of joy of salvation that is Christmas ? Amen
