Well after having been informed that "King of the Road" is, in fact, not a Christmas song¹, I find myself burdened with the unenviable task of picking a new favorite Christmas song. I realize that this actually interferes with my impending task of selecting my top 10 songs of all time, but given the season, I think you should be inclined to cut me some slack. So hopefully by the end of this weekend I'll submit my top 5 Christmas songs of all time.

On the subject of Christmas I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I love Christmas, about how much I've always loved Christmas but my reasons for loving it have changed so much over the years. It seems like a lot of people sort of go through this evolution where Christmas begins to mean something different to them than what it did as a child, and I guess that makes sense. I kinda just always thought I'd be like a big kid when I got older, but hopefully only in the good, innocent way not the selfish and greedy way.

Last year I spent a lot of time contemplating the origins of Christmas, why we celebrate it, and what it is a celebration of. Inspired by an article I read in Newsweek, I read the various accounts of the Christmas story in the Gospels, using that as a jumping off point to find my way back to the New Testament. It was a great experience for me, almost a cleansing experience to sort of rid myself of the childish selfishness that had been ingrained in me for so many years, and helped me start fresh with a new perspective on the holidays. I think by the beginning of Christmas last year I had already learned about the joy of giving, but by the end I learned about the joy of giving more than just things.

This year's experience so far has been a little bit different. Some of the things that are eliciting the most compelling emotional attachment to the season for me are more atmospheric: a brisk breeze carrying the voice of Bing or Frank or Nat King Cole, the rush of the crowd inside the store and the relative stillness of the night just beyond the sliding doors, the stars frozen in the sky by a sunless moon and the cheer that makes all the stress and worry so worth it. I like that tucked in, ready for bed feeling of a warm sweatshirt; I love the smell of hot coffee with a swirl of chocolate and whipped cream and maybe even marshmallows; I love the sound of the family bustling around the Christmas tree.

I know it may not be "spiritual" to cherish any or all of these things about Christmas - or maybe it is. Maybe all of these things have to do with our relationship with the world, and maybe God made us to be relational people. And maybe we're not supposed to cherish the world and the things in it, and maybe we aren't supposed to put our relationships with the world before our relationship with God, but we are supposed to be in relationship with the world. Otherwise, I'm not so sure I see the point.

¹ You don't understand, and I don't expect you to. It's an A-B joke so C ya later.