(Post by: Madie Hobbs – Blogmas Day Sixteen 2023)
On Tuesday night, Lilly and I got to spend the evening babysitting two of our favorite kiddos. We spent our time together talking about their anticipation for Christmas, playing some games, and winding down for bed. As I took the five-year-old little girl upstairs to take a bath before bed, I promised her we could listen to some Christmas music and make a thing of bathtime before she had to go to sleep. If you know my family, you know Crowder is our first pick when it comes to listening to any kind of music, so naturally, I turned on his Christmas album.
The little girl and I were talking and playing some games while she took her bath, and afterwards we continued to chat about some things as she got her pajamas on, I brushed her hair, and she brushed her teeth, all while the music played softly in the background. One of my favorite songs on the album, Crowder’s version of Auld Lang Syne, came on, and if I’m being honest, even though I was lightly singing some of the words to it, I wasn’t paying much attention to them.
In this version of the song, Crowder adds in a few of his own verses between the original chorus of Auld Lang Syne, where he sings about some of the sadness that comes with the end of the Christmas season, and how he is already looking forward to next year. It is a beautiful reminder to really soak in the anticipation we have before Christmas Day, and to use the time to be grateful for the things around us.
As we busied ourselves with her bedtime routine, and I wrangled her into her pajamas, she suddenly stopped and looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You know, I get really sad when Christmas is over too.”
I looked at her with a little surprise. I must confess, I didn’t actually realize what brought that sentiment up for a moment.
“What?” I asked her, hoping she would expound on why that emotion had suddenly bubbled to the surface of her lively little mind.
“He said in the song that he gets sad when Christmas is over,” she explained softly. “I always get sad about that too.”
All of a sudden, I had a moment of realization. In the midst of all our chatting and playing, I assumed she was not listening to any of the music I had been playing. As I said, I wasn’t even fully paying attention to it. But to find out she was actively registering the lyrics, contemplating them, and then applying them to her own life, left me a little stunned.
The relation of the song to her own life jolted me back to a distinct memory I have of a Christmas long gone. I’m not sure why the memory has stuck with me all this time, but I am able to recall in great detail a specific December evening of my childhood where I sat by myself in our kitchen, leaning against one of the windows looking out to our front yard. Snow fell from the sky and heightened the snow already covering the grass, and I sang the lyrics of Joy to the World softly to myself.
This was the first year I could really remember all the words to the song, and I remember singing the part where it says, “let every heart prepare Him room,” and I pondered what it really meant to make room in my heart for Jesus.
As I looked tenderly at this little girl in front of me, I could almost see myself staring back at me. A little girl wondering what Christmas was really all about. How exciting it was one minute, and how sad the next when you realized it was all over.
It reminded me that we often think children cannot understand the true meaning of Christmas. That they will only ever think of the presents and the things they stand to gain during the season. But what if we are really the ones placing that at the forefront of everyone’s minds? What if we are the ones truly diluting the Deeper Magic of Christmas?
You see, I once told you all that Christmas is what we define it as. This year, I tell you that Christmas only holds as much magic in it as we are willing to look for. When we look only for the magic lying dormant in the gifts and decorations and parties, we will have a very briefly merry Christmas indeed.
However, when we seek and create the Deeper Magic in the assistance of a stranger, in the melting wax of our Christmas Eve candles, in the way the snow filters down from heaven displaying the undying creativity of our Savior, or in the bright, eager eyes of the little girl staring back at me, we will be able, truly, to keep Christmas in our hearts all the year long.
When, as parents or babysitters or siblings, we talk more intently and animatedly of the true meaning and the true wonder of the Christmas season, being the birth of Jesus and the salvation that came with Him, we create far more magic than we realize. Our words and the things we allow to be spoken, or sung, around us, hold a great deal of authority over our interpretation of the holiday, and the interpretations of those around us.
Even in five-year-old little girls.
The magic of Christmas is not dead, as so many of us may fear. It is alive and beating through the pulses of our homes this season if only we are willing to uncover it.
But maybe the only way to begin understanding it is to turn off the noise of things like Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town or Jingle Bell Rock.
Maybe we will find it, rather, in the symphonies of our beating hearts and the shine of a little light leading us to a far simpler yet undeniably powerful manger scene.
“Let us revel in rain puddle days,
Let our eyes shine with the sun’s late fire.
Let us sip chilled air like wine and savor the wild tang of cold.
Let us leap and laugh at the wind’s touch, and listen with awe to the choir of the birds in their evensong.
What a world this is, what a gift, and as we walk the Advent way, what a sign of the Beauty that began it, that saved it, and will make it all new.”
~ Sarah Clarkson
The Few 
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