A MAY-BE MAY-BE CHRISTMAS

 Have A Very May-be Christmas 

by Buston

I don't know how to begin this. This is a deep one because my relationship with Christmas is......complicated. We’re currently taking a silent night. 😁😁 See what I did there, because the silent and like the night, like it's a relationship...okay, let's move on. Tough crowd.

It's not only Christmas that I struggle with, as long as it's a holiday like Get-Together, is that still a thing? I barely celebrate them, including my own birthday. Is that a strange thing to say out loud? especially in a season filled with lights, laughter, and the pressure to be joyful. But in these seasons that apprently I should be enjoying, laughing, living like nobody's looking, that's the most depressed I become or be. Because how can I be happy when I'm so broken?

I think just like the mother of most of our problem, mine also began in the intimate sector that is a family. Just like any other African boy, my dad decided to go get and no it's not milk, apparently, french fries or in the luxury word "chipo" Still waiting to this day. He left my mum the full-time role of parent, provider, and emotional shock absorber for two boys. No instruction manual. Just life, fully loaded. Almost immediately my mama had to leave the country to look for greener pastures, not because she wanted to know whether people outside Africa breathe the same air we do but because survival demanded it.That meant growing up without both parents around at a ripe age of I think ten. I know what you are thinking " but you just said you have a brother" yes I do, also older but just like they say, "just because we blood doesn't mean we relate." The most relatable thing we have is supporting Manchester United and even that comes with suffering.

So when these so called celebrative days come, I end up, not alone but in my loneliness, then that's when I end up being alone. Because every smile I see on people's face reminds me of how mine is like a robe of thorns that is just too painful to wear. Every kid I see with a healthy family of both parents just reminds me of how mine is broken and the pieces left is being held together by a football team in England. A version of me I never really experienced. And in those moments, joy doesn’t come naturally. It has to be wrestled for.. or sometimes, simply postponed. It’s not that I hate these seasons. I just don’t know where to place myself inside it.

Now being selective,The Christmas Story in itself isn’t nearly as tidy as we present it. I see something different. I see displacement. I see uncertainty. I see panic, anxiety. I see a young family navigating stress and a lot of emotions in uncomfortable conditions. A child born not into celebration. And somehow, that makes me feel seen.

So maybe my discomfort with holidays isn’t a flaw. Maybe it’s an invitation. An invitation to seek the "Holy" in the "day" It's not about the "whole" you, it's about who you take your "brokenness" to. He enters broken systems, complicated families, and emotionally underfunded environments and somehow still calls it holy. So you don't have to run, you don't have to hide. Just bring all your mess and lay it down at the feet of the Mess-iah, lay it down at the feet of Jesus. 

So my question to you is, Will Your Christ-mas Have Christ In It?