Out for a round of shopping recently, I about had a temper tantrum. “Am I seriously staring at sixteen tables of Christmas décor, one stacked with Elf diapers and another with three types of holiday breakfast cereal?!”

It’s tough to find God in Christmas. Makes me think of an elaborate birthday party where the crowds are many, and the activities consuming enough that it’s the norm to make it through the night, and even home, lying awake in bed, when it dawns on you—“I forgot to see the birthday-boy! Saw him from afar a couple times, I think, but wish we’d gotten some face time." In other words, fun party, fuzzy centerpiece. Great play, but central character could’ve been more central. You get my point. And if you’ve grown-up anywhere around America in the month of December, I’m supposing you can relate.

I’d be pretty hacked if such were the case for my birthday—if everybody came and partied and gave gifts to each other, but never paid me an iota of attention. I’d act like I didn’t care, of course, wanting people to think I was virtuous and selfless and only cared about others having a good time. When, in fact, I knew good and well it was my birthday and simply wished someone had noticed me.

Thankfully Christmas is about Jesus’ birthday, and unless the Cross was a hoax, he really is virtuous and selfless, exorbitantly caring for the well-being of others. So I’m not so sure we hurt his feelings, or find him necessarily distraught in modern treatments of his birthday. Part of me, however, wonders if our approach doesn’t come off a bit confusing, causing something along the lines of, “How the heck did they go from that to that? And where’d they get that part of my story anyway? Chunky old man…reindeer and cone-shaped trees…me being born at an inn...like a Holiday Inn?”

Maybe Jesus thinks Christmas could work well for another month, like April, or August, whose holiday counts could use some bolstering. And that for his birthday, we’d approach things differently, like by having a day that actually celebrated him, or a month where our notice of his story was more intentional. But I’ll resist putting words in his mouth, comparing his needs to mine, which is probably a big part of how this holiday hijacked its birthday boy in the first place.

Bottom line though, is that I’m wanting to hold Christmas a little more openly this year, and little more pointedly toward its celebrant. So I’ve been asking odd and certainly out of my ordinary questions like, “God, what would it look like to decorate with you this afternoon, or find my wonder interacting with yours when I sense the magic of this season, or the joyful sounds of carols? What would it look to think on you when the smells of Christmas overwhelm me, or in the tastes of sweetness I’m indulged? Is there a way to find you in decorations and consumerism, tacky lights and smiling snowmen?”

I expected God to say, “No. Hop a plane to some far off place that’s never heard of me and come back in January. Finding me amidst the modern Christmas is like finding…never mind, I can’t even think of a comparison.” I expected that if I wanted to escape the hoopla and truly celebrate Christ’s birthday, I’d have to sit in a corner singing the Psalms to a tune of “Happy Birthday” all month. But my expectations were off.
About the time of that previously mentioned temper tantrum, before taking a match to all sixteen of those tables, I lost it with God. “This is a crapshoot. I have no idea how to find you here. America is a joke; I wanna move. This scene makes me wanna vomit. Are you telling me to make homemade presents this year? Or that I’m too hormonal to be shopping and should leave?” I wanted an epiphany. I wanted Jesus to jump out of the stupid elf diaper box and tell everyone, “We didn’t even have diapers when I was born…and elves…really?” I wanted him to say how sacrilegious the mall was, and that Santa Claus was the devil. But he didn’t.

I didn’t hear him say much of anything, in fact. But as I tried to breathe a bit deeper, and turn my eyes from the glaring tables, I found myself mesmerized by a most uncanny location–the floor pattern. Scattered throughout their beige shaped squares, all I could see was the repetition of tiny burgundy crosses. They were everywhere. In the most bizarre and maybe over-spiritualizing of ways, it was as if God was saying, “Abbie, I’m here. And I’m staying here. No matter what scene you’re surrounded by, or what shape our stories are being affected by, I’m grounding them. I’m with them, in your midst. I am with you. I am Immanuel.

Half-convinced that I was brainwashing myself, I looked back up at the tables, and beyond them, to see more tables and more supposed birthday decorations for the coming Savior. And all I could notice was the radiance of intersecting perpendicular lines. All I could see was different semblances of crosses, scattered throughout ceiling panels and clothing racks, signage and price tags, making face of themselves throughout my midst.

Heading back to my car that afternoon, a couple bags in hand, I passed by the sixteen tables again. And when I looked at the stupid elf diaper box one last time, it was like Jesus was showing-off. Clear as day, as if packaged to promote his story, I noticed the green ribbon printed around each box, meant to give the look of a wrapped present, and held together by the link of multiple crosses.