Feliz Navidad and other holiday misery

Constant Christmas music, Day 27: I’m going to get seriously sick if I have to hear “Feliz Navidad” by José Feliciano one more time.

I’m not joking.

OK, maybe I’m not serious about barfing, but can we please agree that the song has been played enough this season and we’ll just put it back on the shelf with the elf for another year?

I enjoyed the song when I was a kid, but I’m not a kid anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time. Even my kids are not kids anymore. Yet every year that infernal song gets played over and over and over again. Flipping radio stations doesn’t make a difference. Another song I can do without is “Last Christmas.” For Heaven’s sake, it’s a breakup song, not a Christmas song. It’s a depressing dirge played with an upbeat melody.

On the plus side, I have not heard a peep out of Mariah Carey, and I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself by saying that. How I’ve managed to avoid hearing her at Christmastime is beyond me, but I’m not complaining. What I am complaining about is the total lack of airtime my favorite Christmas songs are getting. I like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” “The 12 Pains of Christmas,” and “Snoopy’s Christmas.”

And thinking of Christmas songs, have you ever listened to the lyrics of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch?” I know the song is from a Christmas cartoon, but it should really be played at Halloween, not Christmas. Seriously!

Speaking of the Grinch, I could do without ever seeing Jim Carrey’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” ever again. It and Will Ferrell’s “Elf” are horrendously stupid and just don’t work for me. The same goes for Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause” movies. Ugh!

This causes great division at our house each Christmas season. Those are my wife’s favorite Christmas movies. She thankfully tries to watch them when I’m not home, but sometimes I walk in and catch her watching them like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete Scrooge. There is a lot I love about Christmas. There are plenty of Christmas songs that I do enjoy. There are also Christmas movies and television shows that I really like watching. My all-time favorite is “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” There is something very endearing about the Claymation classic that warms my heart. I try to watch it, “Frosty the Snowman,” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at least once each season.

Of course, this is all the secular side of Christmas. The real reason for the season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the son of God and the savior of mankind. The other day Sandy was talking about something she read that gave a different light to the story of Jesus’s birth. What we see today in Christmas plays and hear in church sermons is a very sanitized and romanticized version of a very dark and messy story.

Try to picture Joseph and Mary. They’re probably teenagers; newlyweds who have not consummated their marriage. Mary, still a virgin, is pregnant with a child that is not her husband’s. Near the end of her pregnancy, with a baby due any day now, the government calls for a census and they have to make the 90-mile trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That’s about a four-day journey on foot for someone in good health and not pregnant. It probably took them nearly a week or more to get there over rough terrain. On top of that, Mary went into labor on the way.

Imagine how it was for her to be in labor pains and them having nowhere to stay, not even in someone’s home. Desperate, they make camp in a stable. It’s probably filthy with animals, manure, and flies. Mary is miserable and not very happy with Joseph for dragging her through this. When the baby comes, there is no doctor, no nurse, no midwife, just a carpenter who has probably not seen so much as a puppy being born. He doesn’t know what to do and Mary probably doesn’t have much of a clue herself. They are scared and panicked.

Jesus is finally born, wrapped in cloths, and placed in a feeding trough for lack of a crib. Unlike what is depicted in nativity scenes, there are no wise men or crowds of visitors at that time. There were shepherds, but the wise men visited them back in Nazareth years later. In the interim, Joseph is warned not to go home but to flee to Egypt, a journey that makes the trip from Nazareth seem like a walk in the park. No doubt the teenage Mary, carrying a newborn baby and still aching from childbirth, was just thrilled with Joseph.

They are dirty, poor, tired, and on the run for their lives. Yuletide greeting indeed! Yet this messy entrance into the world foreshadows the messy death Jesus would face 33 years later. All of that was so we could have the hope of life eternal in paradise. It’s God’s sacrificial gift to us.

Don’t let this gift be in vain. God gave us Jesus as our only way to him. Let this be at the heart of your celebration this season and always.

Feliz Navidad, my friends. I hope you have a happy and blessed Christmas.