Christmas “Holidays”

This article was originally posted in the Athabasca Advocate on Jaunary 10, 2006

With your permission, I’d like you to participate in a quick survey. Just raise your hands to answer the questions, and I’ll tally the numbers. Ready? Let’s begin…

How many of you enjoyed your holiday break this year (at least for the most part)? Ah, yes, very good. Next question: How many of you are excited to get back to work and your regular routine now that the Christmas season is over? Wow, more hands than I expected. And now the final question: of those of you who are excited to get back, how many of you would say that you didn’t have a “holiday break” at all? Interesting…

The fact of the matter is many people are excited when the holidays are over because they don’t find Christmas and New Year’s to be a holiday at all. Running around to dozens of stores and fighting the crowds just to get that last gift (or the very first one), spending more time in the car then at home so you can visit friends and family, general mayhem and action until the day you go back to work… these are the “holidays” for most people today. It seems that rest and relaxation just aren’t on the menu anymore for most folks.

But contrary to popular belief, human beings were designed to take a break every now and again. Deep down each one of us knows this; our heart cries for it. In North America alone we spend billions of dollars on time saving devices every year, all in the hopes that we will have a few more hours of downtime (instead, these “time saving devices” just make it easier for us to work more often). The need to slow down, be still, and reflect is programmed into us. Don’t believe me? Picture in your mind a quiet street around sunset, with folks sitting on their front porches- the men smoking their pipes and the women drinking tea as people casually walk by saying hello to their friends and neighbours. I know it makes my heart ache.

Rest and relaxation is so important that God himself told us to do it. In Exodus 34:21 God says, “Six days are set aside for work, but on the Sabbath (the word Sabbath means rest) day you must rest, even during the seasons of plowing and harvest.” Jesus went away regularly by himself to rest and pray, sometimes before it was even light out. The writer of Hebrews calls heaven the “place of rest.” Rest is crucial.

So the next time you get offered that extra shift at work, just say no and spend it at home relaxing with your family instead. For your next vacation, plan to go nowhere: just take the phone off the hook and notice what a beautiful country God created for us. Spend a weekend saying hello to your friends and neighbours instead of running to the next hockey game. Do these things, and who knows… maybe you’ll actually have some real holidays next Christmas.