Dissonance

Years ago  my office was across the street from the Westhampton Cemetery.  It was always interesting to see what was going on over  there.  A couple of years Christmas fell on Sunday morning.  Two memories I have, one was of the plastic poinsettias blowing across the street and the other was the number of folks who would visit graves early on Christmas Day.
Last year, during Advent, I, on one Saturday, did a memorial service for one family and an interment in the rain and snow for another.  It reminded me of the absolute necessity of celebrating Christmas.  Not because of sentimentality, but because of our need to believe and see that God does not leave us alone in our darkness but comes to overwhelm the darkness. 
I love Christmas, but it is not heaven.  Every celebration, every feast, every family gathering, is tinged with just a bit of our contingency and sin.  Every cup of cheer eventually runs out. 
Now.... I think we should celebrate hard, precisely because we still live in a fallen world and we anticipate a final and glorious celebration.  We should celebrate in a lively way because it is faithful.  But our celebrations are not perfect because they end and because fallenness intrudes.  There are Herods aplenty in this world. 
I know this is not the typical sentimental view of Christmas.  We usually use it as a time to forget about the hard stuff.  I will celebrate this year and forget the hard stuff for a little while, glad that Jesus never forgets or ignores the hard stuff.  He wars against it, until it is no more.