This past week, we finished the fall semester of Trinity College with our annual dramatic reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and our Cratchit Family Christmas Feast. Reading this lovely story again, I was struck by how Dickens describes Mrs. Cratchit’s emotional state during the Cratchit family Christmas dinner. Bob Cratchit and the children are full of laughter and gratitude as they enjoy their simple meal of goose, mashed potatoes, and applesauce:
But now the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough. Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose someone should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose….In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball…bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Mrs. Cratchit’s anxieties over the pudding—she’s too nervous to have anyone join her in the kitchen and she’s been fretting about the flour—arise from her desire to create a wonderful memory for her family. We can all relate to Mrs. Cratchit’s motherly love, but also to her anxieties and doubts.
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Suppose our “pudding” does not achieve “greatest success” status this Christmas? Suppose our kids don’t like our presents. What if Christmas morning is marred by a toddler’s or teenager’s sinful attitude? Suppose the mashed potatoes are runny or you get behind on Advent or your tree dies before December 25? (These three are all personal experiences from this year, if I’m honest.) We may still be in the hopeful expectation stage, but we all know that not every Christmas is our greatest success ever achieved.
Even worse, what if the sorrow of an unrepentant child or a family rift dampens your desire to celebrate this year? No success is in the offing; you just want it to be over with. The last thing you want to do is smile. Past failures weigh you down, and you don’t really feel like giving it the ol’ Mrs. Cratchit try.
Rather than doubt or dread, there is a better way that mothers can approach the Christmas holidays, and we find it in the seemingly most un-holiday-like book of Ecclesiastes.
“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 2:24
The best thing—no matter where things stand with you this year—is to enjoy your Christmas preparations and your Christmas dinner. Both are a gift from God.
Enjoy Your Christmas Work
I ran to my local grocery store last night for one missing ingredient for dinner, and the lady behind the counter asked if I was ready for Christmas. Am I ready for Christmas? How do I possibly answer that question? Of course I’m excited to celebrate Christmas, but I have at least 154 things to do in less than a week! “Yes and no,” I replied, honestly, and asked her the same. She launched into a family story (we’re friendly like that here in Kentucky) about how her elderly father (who has been ill) was going to give her mother cash, but then, at the last minute, realized that maybe his wife should have some presents to open on Christmas day (“yes,” his daughter agreed, “that might be good”) and that, of course, his daughter was just the one to take care of this for him. So, even though my new checkout friend was ready for Christmas last week, she is no longer. She has her father’s Christmas shopping to do. The young man behind me in line must not have been ready for Christmas either, because he was starting to get impatient with all this chit-chat. I realized that my family might be getting a little impatient for dinner, and so me, my one grocery item, and my now-153 things to do before Christmas, rushed out the door.
For mothers, whether we are looking forward to Christmas or not, the holidays are always a ton of work. Take the usual craziness of life and double it: parties and presents, recitals and travels, baking and decorating, and to make it really special, twenty-five Advent activities, one for each day in December. All this can be more than a little overwhelming and exhausting.
But Ecclesiastes would tell us that the question we need to ask ourselves is not “Are we ready for Christmas?” The question is: “Are we enjoying getting ready for Christmas?”
If Solomon is right (and you know he is), and there is nothing better than to find enjoyment in our toil, then Christmas, with its double dose of work, should be doubly enjoyable. How can this be? I can think of a couple of reasons right off the bat.
First, if we are in Christ, then God has already given us an early Christmas gift: our work in the home. It is a gift from him. This “finding enjoyment in our work” is “from the hand of God.” Our work in the home, whatever it looks like this year, is the most meaningful work we can do. God has called us to love our husband and children and to be busy at home (Titus 2:3-5). This work is a gift! When you’re really thinking about it rightly, you can feel the “rightness” of this work, deep down in your bones. That’s enjoyable toil.
Second, as children of grace all our menial work for our family is gospel work. Every day is about preaching the gospel–not just to ourselves, but to our children. At Christmas, we get an extra special chance to do that in an extra special way. Let’s face it, sometimes our gospel preaching can get a little stale at times. Not the gospel itself—don’t hear what I’m not saying! The gospel is and always will be the most thrilling and astounding truth in all the universe. But we’re not always as thrilled and astounded by it as we should be and, as a result, our presentation of the gospel can be a little less than “wow” sometimes. As I tell my students, there is no such thing as a boring subject, only boring people.
Christmas is our big chance not to be boring! It’s our chance to show off the gospel to our kids in all its glory! (Well, not all of its glory, but you know what I mean.) “Greatest Success Ever” has already been achieved by our Savior. As moms, we get to work doubly hard in December, to show off The Great Success to our family. How is this work not the most enjoyable work imaginable? It is gospel work! Gospel work with night-time Advent stories, and nerf darts wrapped in shiny paper, and a dash of nutmeg. There is nothing better.
Enjoy Your Christmas Food and Drink
The other thing that strikes me about the Cratchit family Christmas vignette is their joy in the meagerest of meals. I “say” that we had a Cratchit family feast with the Trinity students, but really, you’d have to call it Cratchit Christmas Plus. We had mounds of potatoes and loads of turkey and we easily added to the menu with a vegetable and homemade rolls and honey butter. We had sparkling cider and cranberry punch. While the Cratchits pretended not to eat every bite, Dickens wants you to read between the lines that they could have eaten more. Though poor in possessions, the Cratchits overflowed with enjoyment. Here we find a simple illustration of Solomon’s truth: there is nothing better than to enjoy your food and your drink.
Even if life is really hard right now, we are called to enjoy our Christmas celebrations. If Christ, before he went to the cross, enjoyed a traditional celebratory meal with his disciples, we, his children, can rejoice in our Christmas feast, even if it is the last thing we feel like doing.
For a mom who is grieving a family disagreement or a wayward child, enjoying the Christmas celebrations is an act of faith in God. It is believing the truth that, while your suffering might be great, our Savior came to earth to redeem even the worst of family conflicts, even the most distant of prodigal sons. While those we love may be running from God and from us, at Christmas, we celebrate the fact that Christ came to earth. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.” A Son. Given. While we might think we would give anything for our son or daughter to turn to Christ, God gave his Son to us.
Being joyful at Christmas dinner isn’t being fake. It is being real. It is declaring to the family members, present and absent, that there is a deeper, and a more joyful reality than the one we may see around the dinner table. God is our greatest reality and at Christmas we find enjoyment in the birth of his Son, a gift for us.
Are we ready for Christmas? More than we can say. Come Lord Jesus.