5 Counter-Intuitive Lessons for Surviving the Holiday Rush
I was talking with a friend last week when I realized that after a few years of living in Dallas, I couldn't tell time anymore. For the first 30 years of my life, growing up in the Midwest and working in the Carolinas, the seasons were a reliable anchor. Sweaters and snow meant one thing; sunshine meant another. But one May afternoon in Texas, trying to recall an event from a few months prior, I remembered I was wearing shorts. The problem was, I was always wearing shorts. It could have been December, September, or April.
It was a seismic shift, a kind of disorienting grief to realize that a way I had measured the world for my entire life was no longer useful. The holiday season, specifically the period of Advent, can feel a lot like this—a disorienting time that challenges our normal perceptions and rhythms. But what if this isn't a problem to be solved? What if it’s a gift, an invitation “to let go of the way that we've been looking at things”?
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1. Your Sense of Time Is More Fragile Than You Think
That feeling of losing the seasons points to a larger truth: our ways of measuring time are often external and can be easily disrupted, leading to a feeling of “disorienting grief.” We become accustomed to our personal calendars and cultural rhythms, and when they are upended, we feel lost. Life itself can shift around us unexpectedly, pulling our familiar anchors right out of the ground.
The Advent season can be seen as a deliberate, positive version of this shift. It’s an invitation to recognize that our frantic holiday schedules aren't the only clocks worth watching. Instead of being swept away by the pace of the calendar, we are encouraged to attune ourselves to a different kind of time—God's time—and find a new, more stable anchor in the midst of the rush.
2. Light Isn't Meant to Expose You; It's Meant to Protect You
This isn't the only assumption the season asks us to reconsider. Take, for instance, our relationship with light. We often experience it as something harsh. The intense Texas sun, for example, “makes you vulnerable,” exposes you, and even burns. It reveals every imperfection and wilts the plants in your garden. We instinctively think of light as something that exposes.
But the Christian tradition offers a radical reframing of this idea, hinted at in the collecting prayer for Advent and the verses in Romans that inspired it. In this view, light isn’t just about revelation; it’s about protection. It’s a source of safety and strength, not vulnerability.
Paul tells us that light is armor. Light is safety. Light is a defensive force. Light is our saving grace. Light doesn't just expose us, but it brings us life.
3. You Don't Have to Choose Between the Party and the Prayer
As our calendars fill up with parties and concerts, a deep tension emerges. You might feel the pull to embrace “the holly jolly and the tinsel,” but also yearn for the quiet solitude of candlelight and reflection. The temptation is to believe we must choose—to “put our flag in the ground of austerity” and reject the social whirlwind in favor of somber self-reflection.
But this is a false choice. Consider the life of Jesus: he often went into the wilderness for solitude, sometimes praying all night. Yet he also didn’t shun Zacchaeus’s hospitality or the chattering of the woman at the well. He instructed his followers that even when fasting, they should “put oil on our faces and don't shuffle around looking dour.” The call isn't to pick a side between frivolity and faith. It’s to hold both experiences at once, finding meaning in the tension between them.
4. Embrace the Messiness of the "Already and the Not Yet"
The holiday season often feels contradictory. We celebrate magic and joy, yet we are keenly aware of our own struggles, global conflicts, and the anxieties of overconsumption. This feeling of being caught between two realities has a name.
We're sandwiched in this time that theologians call the already and the not yet. God in Jesus Christ has already come. But in a sense, everything is not yet set right.
This isn’t just an abstract concept; it’s the air we breathe. We see it in wars and famines, in international division, and in our own homes. We know it when we go to work and feel we have to turn off pieces of ourselves to fit in. We experience it when we strive for lifestyles we don’t even really want. Acknowledging this messy middle ground isn’t a sign of failure; it is the fundamental condition of our lives. The season calls us to live honestly within this tension—celebrating the holly jolly while also making space for reflection on our world and ourselves.
5. The Real Challenge Is to "Stay Awake," Not to Follow Rigid Rules
When faced with the chaos of the holidays, it’s tempting to seek refuge in rigid rules—no tree before December, declining every other invitation. But these “hard and fast rules that feel so relieving… really just allow us to fall asleep at the wheel.” They provide bumpers that let us become “anesthetized during the more discerning moments of our journey.”
The more difficult, and more meaningful, instruction from Jesus is simply to “stay awake.” This means resisting easy answers and the numbing effects of “sugar and noise.” It means actively and consciously holding peace and generosity at the same time, even in the middle of a packed schedule. Staying awake is about engaging the complexity of the season with discerning attention, rather than trying to manage it with a simplistic checklist.
Conclusion: A New Kind of Attention
Each of these lessons points to a central theme: the holiday rush is not a problem to be solved with better time management or stricter rules. It is an invitation to embrace tension, to practice a new kind of attention, and to accept that our perspectives can and should shift.
Perhaps this season isn't just something to survive, but an opportunity to ask for something more. What if we could learn to hold all of its complexity and light at once, begging that God would attune us to His own time?
