The 12 Days of Christmas

Forty-Eight hours from now, most of us will have completed or be near the end of our typical Christmas Day traditions. Granted, they may be different this year, but I would wager a guess that they will still include early(ish) mornings, presents, and family. If you're like me, Christmas Day tends to end all too quickly and you're left wistfully staring at the last 6 days of the year, wishing you could go back to the 25th and all the joy (and presents) it brings.

What if I told you that the 25th was just the beginning of the party? 

This is no ruse! According to the liturgical church calendar, the 25th of December is the first of the 12 Days of the Christmas Season. Yes, just like the song (hopefully with less birds, though...). So, I want to help you lean into the lengthier (though still not long enough) Christmas season. Get your Christmas sweaters and wooly socks on, grab a warm Christmas beverage, and get ready to drag this party out. 

What follows is a list of Scripture passages to read and activities for you to try out in order to help you celebrate on each of the Twelve Days of Christmas (you can also follow us on instagram @newheightswhbc for daily reminders).

Day 1 | Friday, December 25

Read: Isaiah 11:1-9

Do: Open and enjoy any gifts you've been given!

Day 2 | Saturday, December 26

Read: Luke 1:26-38

Do: Watch a Christmas movie with family or friends

Day 3 | Sunday, December 27

Read: Matthew 1:18-25

Do: Worship with your church body or at home with your family.

Day 4 | Monday, December 28

Read: Luke 1:46-56

Do: Enjoy or play some Christmas music—maybe even go caroling!

Day 5 | Tuesday, December 29

Read: Luke 1:67-79

Do: Take a nap or sleep in; rest.

Day 6 | Wednesday, December 30

Read: Luke 2:1-7

Do: Read a book with a nice Christmas drink.

Day 7 | Thursday, December 31

Read: Luke 2:8-21

Do: Enjoy a meal with family or friends and celebrate New Year's Eve.

Day 8 | Friday, January 1

Read: Luke 2:22-38

Do: Go ice skating or sledding—maybe start a snowball fight!

Day 9 | Saturday, January 2

Read: Matthew 2:1-12

Do: Bring order to some area in your home—clean your room, do the dishes, organize somethign, etc.

Day 10 | Sunday, January 3

Read: John 1:9-14

Do: Bake Christmas treats

Day 11 | Monday, January 4

Read: Colossians 1:9-20

Do: Write and send a Christmas card/letter

Day 12 | Tuesday, January 5

Read: II Corinthians 5:16-6:1

Do: Give one final Christmas gift to someone

More than just reading and doing these activities, though, I pray that the reason for the celebration of Christmas—the coming of our King, Jesus—would carry on in your heart, that you would learn to live your lives in the joyful celebration of God coming to earth, and that your days would be filled with love, joy, and peace. 

Merry Christmas!

Intro to COVIDisms

What a time to be alive. 

I mean, seriously, have you stopped for a moment to just consider the fact that you are living through a moment in history so significant that your grandchildren will have entire chapters in their history books dedicated to it? There will be entire books written about the COVID Crisis. Your children and theirs will ask you what it was like to live through this moment.

Now, grab a bag, breathe into it, don’t hyperventilate. That sense of smallness, of uncertainty, of a lack of control, is a sign that you are beginning to grasp the opportunity of the moment you are in. 

Perhaps, like me, you’ve had moments where you have been completely overwhelmed by the uncertainty, the foggier-than-normal future, the overwhelming amount of information that may or may not be true, the mass of opinions and everyone turning on each other over the way they express them. Perhaps (also, like me) you’ve had moments of complete numbness. Moments where the facts of this situation are just so big that you can’t let yourself think about them so you just robotically do whatever is in front of you to do—make dinner, change diapers, watch tv. Then there is everything in between: anger, sorrow, ironic laughter, exhaustion, fear, wanting to touch strangers for no reason at all, and much, much more. These are the perfectly normal side effects of living in such crazy times.

But what is next? What is at the end of this? Those ridiculously impossible questions are questions that we need to ask—but not just about the world economy, not just about our physical health, not just about how and whether we will gather together or if we’re allowed to hug our grandparents—but about ourselves and the way we live our own lives. 

It would be a great tragedy if after all of this we had learned nothing, if we came to the end when life goes back to whatever we mean by normal and we just blindly jumped back onto the train. 

This crisis has us asking a million questions that simply have no answers and neglecting to ask the basic questions regarding our own personal, spiritual human growth. If we believe that no moment in history is beyond our good Creator and Father, then that means this is not just a time to survive, but a time to thrive. A time to learn to walk better in the Way of Jesus, rather than just longing to get back to how you used to do it. 

Maybe not everything we used to do was the best way we could have lived. Maybe “normal” wasn’t the best normal. 

Or maybe it was! The point is, these are questions we need to be asking ourselves. As we chomp at the bit to get back into the world, back with each other (back to the barber!), I fear that we will dive headfirst back into the busy stream of the “American Way” and never pause to ask what we’ve learned in all this about the Jesus Way.

I am asking these questions with you. I am wrestling with my situation, my life, the way I love my community, the way I structure my time, the way I filter information (or deliberately choose to not listen to it). The way I Church. The way I live my life before God.

I will be asking these questions out loud—I hope you don’t mind. It will be like talking to myself, only I hope that you will eavesdrop and have the same conversation with yourself. My hope is to write a series of…things. They aren’t necessarily blogs and they aren’t necessarily articles or chapters of a book or tweets. They’re just thoughts.

I like giving weird names to things, so I have decided to call them COVIDisms. I don’t really know what that means, but it’s an undefined term that will define what we are doing together (does that make sense?). We will ask questions together, and in the end I pray that you will take the necessary time to reflect and answer those questions for yourself. Not by yourself, mind you! But in community and conversation with the Holy Spirit about how Jesus might live were He to fill your shoes.

Let’s thrive together. Let’s grow together. Let’s come out of this darkness renewed in the Light of Christ.

Join me.

Josh