How family worship can save us from binge-ing on the wrong stuff.
One Christmas our gingerbread house went missing. For two whole days it had been the centerpiece of our dining room table where we constructed it from gingery cookie panels, piped frosting, gumdrops and peppermints, and licorice sticks. Now it was gone. Vanished. Missing in action. A quick sweep of the house discovered my 4 year old daughter hiding behind an armchair in the living room eating it by the fistful. She sat on the floor with legs straight out in front of her, the half-eaten decoration in her lap, and with alternating hands she gobbled it down. I grabbed the video camera and stood over her calling her name, hoping she would turn her frosting and gingerbread smeared face up in my direction, but she wouldn’t look up. She gulped handful after handful - like my own tiny Augustus Gloop plunging her head beneath Willy Wonka’s chocolate river and guzzling it dry. After a few minutes, I put the camera down and saved my little one mid-binge before she ate the house down to its foundation.
It’s what parents of faith fear most about the season - the sheer gluttony it seems to incite, and gluttony has no age limits. MOST of us don’t want to purge the holiday of all it’s confections. We don’t HATE the trees and tinsel, the lights and jingle bells, the snowmen, the reindeer, the elves. Most of us have no beef with the Grinch, or George Bailey, or Clark Griswold. We’d just like less of them. We’d like them to be in the background and not center stage. We want them to be the undercard, not the main event.
What we want is more JOY TO THE WORLD and fewer fa-la-la-la-las. We want the PEACE ON EARTH to be eternal and not seasonal sentimentalism. We want the MERRY of the holiday to reach soul-deep, not glance off as a casual greeting. We want more JESUS to fill the holiday, not simply more manger scenes or Christian bumper stickers (Jesus is the reason for the season). We want the MEANING of his birth in Bethlehem. We want the HOPE and CELEBRATION of his INCARNATION. We want the world-upending POWER of his ADVENT –for ourselves and our kids.
But how do we make the shift? How do we turn down the volume and brightness on the North Pole and turn up the volume and brightness on the Nativity? How do we shrink the one and enlarge the other?
The shrill and belligerent tactics of the culture war never work. When we wage the culture war we spend more time and energy decrying what we are AGAINST rather than what we are FOR. The gospel is not a message of ‘against-ness’.
And we don’t need to try to win with greater quantity (an attempt to outnumber cultural treatments of the holiday with Christianized versions). Remember, the coming of the Savior into our world was small. And quiet. But ultimate.
The key is frequency. With frequent family worship we can spread the FULL story of the nativity across the entire month of December. With frequent family worship we remind ourselves, and impress on our kids, that the Christmas story defines WHO we are and How we live in the world.
How frequent is frequent? Daily is best, three times a week is tremendous, once or twice a week deserves applause, too. Something is better than nothing, so do what you can. Make it part of your routine, keep it SHORT (10-15 minutes), keep it moving. When it feels like you’ve got the hang of it, you can always increase your frequency.
But DO family worship. Even if it is small. And quiet. Like the birth of JESUS. Otherwise the season inevitably turns into a gingerbread binge.
To fill your holiday season with a month’s worth of family worship, buy your copies of FAR FROM HOME in the Camel + Needle Shop
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