Christmas is not about cozy

Jamie of Light and Momentary offers this beautiful reflection on the Nativity:

Christmas is not about cozy.

We are getting ready to celebrate a birth. That means work, not idleness. Before the baby comes, you prepare. You think hard about what the baby will need from you and you find it. Even if it's costly, you figure out a way to obtain it -- it's for the baby, after all, and nothing is more important than the baby right now. You get everything ready. You clean the house. You wait -- not idly, wondering if the chestnuts are toasted yet -- but expectantly, eagerly. Your whole world is about to change.

We tend to romanticize the Nativity, but I think often of how hard it must have been....I think he chose that time and place to say, Where there is privation, I am Lord. Where it stinks and you have to watch out for the piles of dung, I am still Lord. When it is not what you expected, not what you would have chosen, I am Lord even then. In the humblest circumstances, my glory is undimmed. The angels saw it and sang out: gloria in excelsis. Often we imagine the same tableau, strange and humbling, and we sing out too: our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we.

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Image source: Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds