So Tired at Christmas

The Romans built roads, the Greeks did philosophy, Americans don’t sleep much.

Consuming worthwhile entertainment alone is a full time job: Netflix is calling me to watch the complete Shakespeare now. Add to that the temptation of the guilty pleasures of the new Dr. Who (the best new series of the last three years), working out at the gym, and reading the latest James Scott Bell novel and sleep must go.

Of course, I don’t get to do all those great things very often, because I am lucky to have a job I love. This means that there is no end to the productive stuff I can do! Technology means that I can answer e-mail, work on a book project, or fix a spreadsheet on a day off at Disneyland!

If you have never thought about Quine in line for Space Mountain, you have not lived the multitasking life to its fullest. It really is fun. Solve a knotty problem in epistemology and then scream on a roller coaster.

There is a good side to all of this .  .  . a happy side, but also a tiring one.

The problem is not fundamentally that I am tired and it would be no revelation to any American that most of us are weary. You can find a jillion web sites urging us to sleep. The problem I think is that too much doing can lead to romantic failure.

We become massively self-centered and there is no love where self is king.

Even defining the problem as “my being tired” misses the point, because it is still all about me. Sleep becomes one more entertainment option (wait until someone masters giving us dreams!) or one more health choice so that we can do more play and work.

Romance requires concentrated time spent on another person with our “A-game”  being horded for them. I sleep so that I can be witty for her, I read so there is another anecdote for her, I work to earn her respect. Romance demands rest so that we can give the beloved our best.

Our “tiredness” then is mostly of self.

Christmas is a chance, a blessed chance, to escape this madness. December 25 is the one day most of us cannot be expected to work and should not be doing things just for self. Family is here. Friends are near. We must stop away from the screen and look at incarnate people to properly celebrate the Incarnation.

It is easy. Or it should be.

The diabolical business, more specials on television, more shopping, more consumption for self, that pops up at Christmas bids to ruin it all, but we can stop.

We can today step away from business, self-promotion, self-improvement, and self-centered entertainment and play Legos with our kids. This would be such a massive improvement for most of us that it is tempting to stop there with the Hallmarkian injunction to love others.

But Jesus was too wise to stop with telling us to love our neighbors with the care we give to ourselves. He pointed out that we must love God, not the God who ends up agreeing with us on everything, but the personal God outside our heads. Our neighbors we can choose and our families we might be able to bend to our will, but the Creator God is beyond our power.

The glorious thing about the God of the Bible is that He stubbornly refuses to the change His unchanging Word to fit the times or my mood. Of course, the consumer culture has created a false god, a Santa Deity, who is a reflection of our moods and who affirms us at every turn, but this is just another entertainment option for those with a taste for religious fun.

I am talking about Jesus. Bethlehem is not a little town in my mind, but a real place in Palestine. The cross was not a piece of costume jewelry for my neck, but an instrument of government sanctioned torture. You know you have found the real God when He, like any real person to be loved, makes irritating, but just demands.

He commands me to be chaste. He commands me to love my enemies. He commands me to joy that lies outside of myself.

It is all so annoying until I do it and then it makes me happy. Oddly, this is the final blow to me focus on self, this divine happiness.

If it just made me miserable, it would be easier! I could then develop a feeling of self-sacrifice and nobility in myself, but instead it points out the folly of my life. Self-centered consumerism has made me tired, but much of it was generated by trying to avoid obedience to God’s commands and to simple duty. When I do my duty, stop thinking of my own pleasure, I get pleasure, but then I cannot be sure that I have become humble and giving at all!

My obedience may just be for my own good!

This means I must stop thinking (endlessly thinking) about my own virtue, my own duty, my own charity and think of God. God will command me to think of others and serve them. He will command me to rest from all my work on at least one day of the week.

He will demand I focus on people the way I wish they focused on me.

I will be rested to give Him my best, so that my talking to Him does not end in my falling asleep.

For me the Holiday started on Friday. Today is the first day of a week off  . . . for which I am most thankful . . . but most of us will at least get the Day. We can make it a Day for Him and from Him to others or we can try to amuse ourselves.

We will be disappointed in the second, but blessed in the first.

Now I shall go nap, perchance to dream, what dreams may come? God knows best.