Happy Feast of the Holy Family! Merry Christmas to you all! Right around this time of year, I’m not sure about you, but I usually find myself one-part exhilarated, three-parts exhausted, five-parts full of food, ten-parts thankful, and all-parts ready for a long tropical vacation, hahaha. Growing up as a child in mid-Michigan, Christmas vacations typically meant hours upon hours in the backyard playing in the snow with my siblings. We made forts and tunnels, rolled massive snowmen, even once built an iced-down bobsled luge off the back deck. But whenever the plow trucks came through the neighborhood, we were tasked with shoveling the driveway. Not exactly the supreme idea of fun for a kid. Luckily for us, our parents were engineers.
Now many wonderful qualities define my parents and the way they raised us. One of those qualities has always been, let’s say, an engineering-minded knack for optimization. The Lenz household never lacked the right tool for the job, or the ability to procure it. This meant we had (in my childhood opinion) the best walk-along, self-propelled snowblower in the neighborhood. It didn’t have wheels, it had treads. It was basically unstoppable for clearing any amount of snow up to 24 inches deep, no matter how fluffy or heavy. The thing was a literal beast.
So even though Christmas vacation still included chores, we always seemed to be well-equipped and well-trained by our parents to help take care of the necessities that keep family life rolling smoothly. Seems odd to say, but true, that clearing the driveway of snow was for me one of the life-giving family rituals of winter life.
In this season of Christmas, something big we celebrate is the shatteringly beautiful fact that in order to save the world, God made himself the son of a human family. As the sovereign wielder of all divine power and wisdom—capable of creating the galaxies! —God strolled into creation as a helpless baby in need of good parents to protect him, feed him, clothe him, and raise him. Jesus’s life was filled with the rituals of family cohesion: all the repeated daily, weekly, seasonal patterns which reveal just how much we depend on each other to thrive, and just how much we can help each other. Even a child with an oversized snowblower has something valuable to offer.
God made himself to have to learn how to sweep the dust off the floor, clean the dishes, plant the vegetables, use an axe, make the bed, milk the goats, gather water from the well, even shave his beard. Who equipped Jesus? Who trained him for the realities of life? Who taught him to pray? Who set him up for success? An Ivy-league education? A military academy? A nest-egg IRA? Nah. Just a pair of holy parents who were faithful to life-giving family rituals.
Fr. Brian