Letting Go... At Christmas

There is a list every December. It’s long, ambitious, and full of good intentions. It holds the things that should happen, the things that would make Christmas feel just right if I could only check every box. And every year, somewhere between Advent hope and Christmas Eve exhaustion, I am reminded that not everything on the list is meant to be finished.

The essentials get done. Most of the teacher gifts did get done, and that feels like a small miracle in itself. Worship is prepared. Bulletins are printed. Slides are ready. Sermons are written and recorded (for next Sunday). Music is planned. The story is told. The light is lit. Christmas happens.

And then there are the other things.

The specialty Christmas gifts—the ones that require extra thought, extra time, extra emotional energy—will wait until Epiphany. Staff gifts, chosen with gratitude and love, will also need to wait until Epiphany. Not because they don’t matter, but because there are only so many hours in a day and only so much a body and spirit can carry. Epiphany, after all, is about gifts too. There is grace in that timing.

Sometimes faithfulness looks less like doing everything and more like managing the chaos.

I didn’t do it alone. I am deeply grateful for an incredible office manager who quietly holds so much together, and for a musician willing to travel so that Christmas music can still fill the sanctuary. Because of them—and so many others—Christmas will happen. Not perfectly. But faithfully.

At home, the chaos has had a name this year: Marshall’s arm catastrophe. Life has been disrupted in ways we didn’t plan, and yet, in the middle of it, the kids have stepped up. They’ve shown resilience, patience, and care for one another that humbles me. They remind me that love doesn’t need perfect conditions to show up.

And in the end, when the lists are half-crossed off and half-released, when some gifts are wrapped and others are postponed, when expectations are adjusted and grace expands to fill the gaps, this truth remains:

God is still with us.

Emmanuel does not depend on completed checklists or perfectly timed gifts. Emmanuel shows up in the unfinished, in the postponed, in the managed chaos. God is present in the sanctuaries and the living rooms, in the helping hands of staff and musicians, in children who rise to the moment, and in weary hearts learning to let go.

This Christmas, not everything will be done.

But what matters most already is.

Merry Christmas Eve Friends.