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Happening ... in the Local Church
The
lesson buried in a boastful Christmas letter
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, raw
pride nipping on your prose. Stunning feats being sung in a card and
kids dressed up like dynamos.
The Christmas Song we compose in the annual family letter can sound
awfully sour compared with the lyrics Nat King Cole crooned.
In our modern rendition, the “eyes all aglow” belong to proud parents,
not tiny tots. And those reindeer really know how to fly; they made the
Honor Roll.
I’m as guilty as you. We roll our eyes at the boastful letters, then we
roll up our sleeves, racking our brains for the year’s most impressive
accomplishments. We wrap them in muscular language, trying to recall the
active verbs of resume rhetoric like “execute” and “implement.”
Whenever possible, we reference ranks: Captain, Senior Consultant, Most
Valuable, Best in Class.
To back it up, we quote from a panel of experts: the teacher, the coach,
the priest, the principal, the boss.
Then we quantify our success: winning first place in soccer, scoring a
33 on the ACT, shaving two minutes off a run, taking a 10-day trip to
seven countries, overseeing 20 employees.
In the end, our attempt to update friends reads more like a request for
a job promotion.
Of course, it’s hard to avoid some of these techniques. They help us
fill a blank page in comprehensible terms.
But on a deeper level, this holiday custom provides us with a unique
opportunity for self inventory. How we sum up a year can be incredibly
telling — if you read between the lines.
When my mom asked me to write my portion of our family Christmas letter,
I made note of the notables. Easy enough. Then I read through it,
surprised to discover that the entire paragraph pertained to my
education and career. The lingering questions being: Do I have friends?
Hobbies? A life outside work?
It was a reality check. I’m reworking the paragraph — and the lifestyle.
Our achievement-centric society takes hold at a young age. By the time
you finish your schooling, there’s pressure to not just begin a career,
but to excel at it, to quickly earn the kind of accolades for which
Christmas letters are notorious.
But the measurements we find handy and acceptable are often faulty. And
the feats we deem admirable and important are often meaningless. In the
scheme of things, that is.
Because the scheme is incredibly broad, spanning back to a baby born two
millennia ago. His arrival did not involve a new Lexus or an upscale
B&B. Just a bumpy donkey ride and a dusty manger. He did not go on to be
voted Most Popular. Truth is, he was kind of a loner, befriending lepers
and defending an adulteress.
Jesus didn’t see the Pharisees for their status and power; he saw their
hypocrisy. He never paraded virtue; he prayed in private. He took no
stock in society’s arbitrary metrics and he made that known. St. Peter
wrote, “With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand
years like one day.”
Our only true judge couldn’t care less about our rung on the corporate
ladder. Rather, he asks us to be good and faithful servants, to feed the
hungry and welcome the stranger in our midst.
This December, as bonuses are awarded and progress is chronicled on
holly berry stationery, remember this: What really counts cannot be
counted.
Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
E-mail her at christinacap@gmail.com.