Week Three of Advent: JOY, to the World

Luke 1:46-47, 49 KJV “And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.”

Joy To The World!

We would like to think that during the Christmas season, joy would be a given. You’d go shopping for the holiday meals that you’ll prepare for the family, you’ll run into friends from church or school, exchange pleasantries and all will be right with the world. That is until the cashier goes to the intercom and announces over the loudspeaker “PRICE CHECK!” 

Suddenly your joyful experience takes a turn. The twenty people in line behind you all begin rolling their eyes, throwing their arms in the air, and grumbling about the stores' cashiers and service. Complaining along with anger has now overshadowed the season all because the stamp of a price fell off your top-of-the-line ham you were purchasing.

“Excuse me,” you whisper, “Can’t you price check in that little book of prices you have there?”

Through snapping gum the cashier barks, “No ma’am, these are new and not in the books yet.” She blows a bubble and it pops as if to say ‘this is all your fault for wanting to have a joyful experience’.

Now you yourself are becoming disgruntled. You just wanted to be prepared for when the family came rushing through the door with their red noses, gifts in hand and smiles on their faces on Christmas day. Looking back at the line behind you, there certainly is no smiles on those faces. The price arrives via a manager who has to personally tap in the code and she now decides to program the cash register for others who might be buying the same ham. 

By now the people are becoming vocal, all because you wanted a ham and a joyful experience on Christmas day. This is not Christmas day so you ever so slightly feel the anxiousness growing inside and are a bit angry that this has to happen NOW, not to the lady or man behind you but to you on your joyful shopping excursion. 

“Can we move it along now?” You tried not to sound snarky but the manager gave you a sword through the heart look.

“You’re the one who bought the ham lady,” she snapped back, obviously overworked and underpaid.

The cashier finished up, placed all your bags in the cart, now for the credit card to go through. A problem with the computer once again has the line grumbling and storming off to another crowded register while some stayed, unaffected by all of the bitterness going on around them. There they are you thought, the ones who really know what the joy of the season means.

The transaction finally goes through and you try to salvage some joy in the whole event after the cashier says, “Thank you and have a nice day. NEXT.” 

“Merry Christmas,” you say and it was as if you spit out a vulgar foreign language. 

“I don’t celebrate Christmas, NEXT!” She was now trying to shoo you out of her lane. Now it was YOU who were offended. What did she mean she doesn’t celebrate Christmas, how can someone NOT celebrate Christmas? You look around the store at all the flashing lights, filled to the brim shopping carts, kids running and screaming, and people with stress running down their faces. There was no joy in this flurry of expedient shopping. Joy was not here in the hustle and bustle of a crowded store with people last-minute Christmas shopping and missing the actual joy in what Christmas is all about.

Being aroused from your daydreaming, the young lady behind you with a small smiling child in the seat of the shopping cart with a few tv dinners and some baby food says, “Excuse me, ma’am,” as she tries to go around you, the daydreamer. 

You look at her. Her dark hair unkempt and a little scraggly, her coat weathered and worn. The smiling child with his puffy coat and stocking feet dangling through the holes looks at you with the brimming eyes of innocence.

You ask her, “Why did you stay in line with those few things in your cart?”

“I’m in no hurry,” she says, “I have food for another week, my son is happy, I have a roof over my head and shoes on my feet. There’s no reason to be hurried. He’s coming whether they like it or not.” She again tries to go around you.

You stop her. “Miss, I’d like to give you my cart full of food, is that okay?”

Tears brimmed her wide brown eyes, “Ma’am? You don’t have to...,” she went on to say tears now overflowing her eyes as you put your cart full of enough food for a family of eight in her hands.

You begin putting her little bit of food in your cart and offer to walk her to her car. She thanks you over and over again, placing her giggling child in your full cart. “God Bless you ma’am, God bless you, and Merry Christmas.” 

You begin daydreaming again amid the hustle and bustle realizing at that moment that finding joy in the season isn’t about the hurriedness, it isn’t about the blinking lights or the numerous expensive price tags on the gifts under the tree, joy isn’t even about the perfect family meal. Joy is about being content with what you have at that very moment, a roof over your head and shoes on your feet. And you know why? In a politically correct world trying to change CHRISTmas? HE IS COMING whether they like it or not! 

Startled by a bump in the now empty cart from a rushed shopper, you look for the young lady you gifted. She was nowhere to be found. Your face reddened and you smile feeling a rush of joy filling your heart once again knowing deep down, the reason for the season. He IS coming, whether they like it or not! 

Merry Christmas to ALL. May you find JOY in YOUR heart this Christmas season! 

Hebrews 13:2 (KJV) “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

The Hustle and Bustle of the Season

James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

The Hustle and Bustle of the Season

While everyone is trying to get into the spirit of Christmas, get his and her trees trimmed, the light show twinkling outside, the house was done, the home brimming with presents, the rush of the holiday season can be overwhelming. Then you see people saying ‘remember the reason for the season’ when they themselves don’t even take the time to slow down and remember why this season exists.

Did you know even atheists celebrate Christmas? They don’t know why but they’ll stand firm and say they’re just doing what everyone else is doing, or they do it for the food or that it’s just another day they can party.


The pagan holiday is celebrated around the world in many odd sorts of traditions and folklore. While each of the religions in America celebrates Christmas in different ways, the holy day (designated by man) is celebrated in a select number of ways. The only thing Christians agree on is that it is the celebrated day of Christ’s birth. It would take America to turn Christmas into a materialistic commercialized holiday.

Since America is considered ‘the melting pot’ with a diverse nation of cultures and religions, Christmas is celebrated in individual fashion from the Irish, Germans, Greeks, and Italians, to the atheist, Catholics, Jewish, etc. all celebrating Christmas in their traditional fashion. Even I find myself celebrating the holiday different than what is traditionally accepted and expected.

As a child, I was no different than anyone else waiting in anticipation at the top of the stairs for Santa to deliver lots of new toys! Even though we were very poor, we never knew it by the hustle and bustle leading up to the day of presents. Christmas day was all about the yearly family get-together as the family would visit us or we’d go house-to-house visiting family. I grew up in the city and most of my relatives lived within a one-mile radius.

By the time Christmas night came the adults in the family were unrecognizable as inebriation was the norm for Christmas day in my childhood. No church, no tradition, just booze and presents. Not that we kids minded but by today’s standards I believe my entire childhood would be unacceptable to the normal folks of the world. Normal, does anyone have a normal Christmas and honestly, what IS normal?

Maybe this is why I set off at a young age (seventeen) to be different, started my own traditions, mingled with the robotic traditions of the day and tossed a lot of what was ‘acceptable’ to the world out the window! I think I took what I saw as silly traditional pagan rituals and conformed myself to be more of what Christ would’ve been like if December 25th WAS His birthday.

In MY mind, I didn’t see Jesus as running around making sure he bought everyone the perfect gift, made sure he had a Santa on his lawn, lights and tinsel all over the place. No, I would think Jesus would keep it quite simple and use symbolism as gifts and decorations. He wasn’t so focused on himself selfishly, no he GAVE instead of received and he kept it simple, a rock, a tree branch, a candle, his heart, his soul, His LIFE.

As a people, we are steeped in tradition. We carry out our Christmas as what our parents handed down to us and we carry on those traditions for our kids and give them our spin of the traditional holiday. In other words, we took away the holy day and made it a day of tradition and celebration. Somewhere along the passing of the torch, we lost what the real meaning of the season was meant to be, to begin with.

It’s been about twenty-five years since the hustle and bustle season got under my skin. Now it is laid back with the day being celebrated as a visit to my brother-in-law's house where we all get together to eat. The family stopped the ‘gift exchange’ quite a few years ago and now it is just a day to celebrate with family. What a humble bunch of people my Lord blessed me with!

This year has taken on new shape and meaning for me. Last year at this time I was anticipating a doctor visit pretty much sure of what the diagnosis would be. My Christmas was overshadowed by pain and concern. Now almost a year after my diagnosis I’m no longer filled with pain but with Hope as my Lord has given me once again a new meaning to the Christmas season. As society becomes overwhelmed by the materialistic hustle and bustle of the holy-day season let us remember the humble, the less fortunate, the homeless and the hungry. Let the living Hope live on in the front and center of the holiday instead of being masked in the shadows. Let the Light of the Lord shine down on you this season.

God Bless Everyone

Hebrews 1:1-4 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” 

The Light Show

1 Kings 6: 4 And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.

It happened on Saturday, the 26th of November. I was allotted the time of rest on the 25th, and I knew, I just knew I had two eager kids who wanted the tree to be assembled and lights and bulbs adorning the limbs. Did I just say kids? Plural? Well I meant, my man and my son. How bad of me.

Anywho, I woke up, not feeling able to do anything and I just prayed, “Please God, give me the strength to get this day moving along and allow the light show to be embraced by my family and I. Please! Please! Please?” So after movement began in the house, stirring was a welcomed sound, thus I began.

I dusted the furniture, began humming Christmas tunes, (that was to signify that we might get moving.) Steven looked at me as if to say, “You okay?” And my returned gaze said, “No, but we’re getting this done!” I told them of the plan (not that it was going to go off without a hitch) but they were on my team, so it was a win win for me. Christmas music playing, we started.

Adam descended the stairs and began bringing up, piece by piece, the Christmas ornaments. For every step he took up, he carried down a nic-nac or something that would be put away until after Christmas. Huffing and puffing,  and puffing and huffing, the Christmas ornaments adorned the shelves, the manger stood firm with the lil people in their places and pardon the pundit here, it was ‘beginning to look a lot like Christmas... every where we turned’ !!!

Adam took a break, I made some sandwiches, stopped to sit on the heating pad after popping some ibuprofen, then it was back to the assembly line we went. Adam was bringing the tree up. It weighs more than 50 lbs of awkward dead weight, so limb by limb it was carried up the steps, until the huge box was able to be carried up.

Steven and I were on this end, waiting in the living room and assembling the tree, while Adam, the lil trooper, kept going and going. After the tree was upstairs, he carried up the lights and bulbs, and was still at this time carrying stuff down the dreaded steps. And all he asked for was...a Pepsi! I said “YES!” and on he went lugging this and that, traipsing here and there, then finally, the first set of lights were now on the tree.

Steven and I were wearing thin, my back aching, my legs useless as I sat on the floor as a referee. Adam took over for the second and third pair of lights and now it was ornament time. I sat in the desk chair hanging ones at eye level, and Steven and Adam were moving around the tree and bringing it to completion!

More trips to the basement for Adam after we cleaned up any remaining mess, and the light show was a hit!!!

Then I had to find the energy to make supper... I did; afterward, we all collapsed. I on my sofa and him in his cap, Adam settled down, for a long nights nap!!!


Hark the herald Angels sing...Glory to the newborn king.

Thank you Dear Lord for prayers answered!

***

Pss.136: 7 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:

Poetry Sunday ~ Sight of the Night Soul

Sight of the Night Soul
All rights reserved: copyright © Joni Zipp

The stars have splashed my blinking eyes

blinding me with its disguise.

Now the light may crystallize

all that I have seen.



The tree bears fruit of every kind.

To thee I wish to be defined.

For all the light now has me blind.

Senses nearly keen.



Confused by sight and sordid sound;

truly lost what I have found.

Kneeling on the trodden ground

From thee I must be weaned



I hide behind the night lights shower

not to frail I will not cower.

Safely under the bridled bower,

the storm clouds thus convene



Lofty soul these things I seek.

Strengthen me when I am weak.

Of this earth among the meek.

Grasping sights unseen.




copyright © Joni Zipp