christmas

Holiday fervor is a little tiring this year.
Last weekend, our dear friends the Polzins brought us a Christmas tree, and we were able to put it up and decorate (low-key, don't worry) this weekend. So that helps with the festive feelings.
Also, I was actually able to buy gifts and wrap them. No bows, but they are wrapped. Good enough.
And we have family coming over Christmas morning. With the various foods (milk, eggs) I don't know what we'll have for breakfast (the tradition is eggs with buttermilk-heavy coffee cake), but we will have gifts! and festivity!
But we haven't been able to read from our Advent guide much at all. And our trip out of town is stressing me out a little bit (to our in-laws). We want to go so badly I wouldn't think of cancelling, but if staying at home all day with Lucy is exhausting, I don't want to imagine what travel will be like. But maybe the change of pace will be bracing.
All that said, I have little extra energy right now to think holiday thoughts or go to parties or cook special foods. I don't feel very...Christmassy.
I would feel sorry for myself, except I think perhaps my unChristmassy feeling is actually closer to Christmas than any evergreen tradition.
At night, nursing Lucy to sleep, sometimes I sing Christmas carols. A lot of them are lullabies. And they always talk about mother and child, the baby in the manger.
What's more Christmas than infant care? What experience will bring me closer to our Savior's birth than an actual live child to take care of? Sure, she doesn't have blinking lights, but she is a beautiful creation.
It awes me, the more I see of babies, that God chose to become one. Babies are precious, but they're so...helpless. So out of control of their fate--their food. Someone has to do everything for them except breathe and swallow and digest. And they take so long to mature. Years! God was willing to be helpless and stumble and spit up and wet himself and learn to walk. And they're so--fragile, especially at the beginning.
God was willing to let a humble creation, care and feed him. Be base and physical and needy. Oh--so needy.
Just think: Mary learned how to breastfeed with Jesus. That's no small task. She was a first-time mom, just like me. (Granted, she'd probably been around a lot more babies than me, and had a community of moms and family around, instead of our weird nuclear family isolation, but still).
So for this my first Christmas as a Mom, I actually feel pretty Christmassy in my own untraditional way. There are a lot of things I'm impatient with and miss about my old life, but God sure is present with us in Lucy. There will be time for caroling and parties and Christmas cookies. What I have now is the carol: mother and child.