I Miss Christmas
Look Around and Tell Me
Here we are, just days before Christmas.
For some reason, the world doesn’t seem to be in a celebratory mood.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Here in our little corner of the world, a big shopping trip means a visit to Walmart. So yesterday, I made the fifteen-minute drive, not to buy anything in particular, but to listen to the sounds of the season, to soak up some Christmas spirit, and maybe give my mood a little nudge.
The parking lot was packed. I ended up in a space about two football fields from the entrance. As I got out of the car, I noticed a woman struggling to load her young son into the back seat. The boy was screaming at the top of his lungs.
Being the knight in shining armor that I sometimes imagine myself to be, I walked over to see if everything was okay. Obviously, it wasn’t. Just as I reached them, the woman turned and slapped the boy hard across the face. The sound stopped me cold.
Before I could say anything, she whirled around and started shouting at me in Spanish, telling me to mind my own business. I backed away, helpless and humiliated, watching her shove the boy into the car.
A Walmart security guard was standing by the door. I told him what I’d seen and asked if he could do something.
He shook his head.
“No, sir. Walmart won’t let us get involved. But the kid will be fine. She’s in here four times a week. Every time she comes, she beats the crap out of him. But we’re not allowed to interfere.”
I turned toward the automatic doors, the sound of Christmas music spilling out to greet me, and thought, This is what we’ve come to?
A few days later, I told a friend about the scene in the parking lot. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I know exactly what you mean.”
He told me about something that happened to him at the post office.
A disheveled man in his thirties had approached him, eyes sunken, hands trembling, the kind of look that tells you a person’s near the end of his rope.
“Hey, man,” the stranger said, “How about a little help?”
My friend had a five-dollar bill in his pocket. He handed it over. The man stared at it for a moment, then threw it to the ground.
“If that’s the best you can do,” he said, “keep it.”
My friend just stood there, stunned.
And then he said the same thing I’ve been thinking all week:
I miss Christmas.
I’ve been thinking about that boy at Walmart and the man at the post office ever since.
For days, the words kept echoing in my head, I miss Christmas.
But somewhere in the quiet of those thoughts, a new voice began to whisper.
Maybe Christmas isn’t what we’ve lost.
Maybe it’s what we’ve buried, under noise, speed, and stuff.
When I was a kid, Christmas wasn’t about packages from Amazon or fights over parking spaces. It was the smell of pine, the warmth of a church pew on Christmas Eve, the crackle of a fireplace that burned more memories than wood. We didn’t have much, but we had enough.
Enough hope.
Enough love.
Enough faith to believe that the world could still be kind.
Somewhere along the way, we traded wonder for efficiency. We wrapped everything in paper and forgot to unwrap our hearts.
Yet every now and then, something breaks through, like a beam of light under a closed door.
It’s in the child who still believes.
In the carol that makes an old man cry.
In the neighbor who drops off a pie and says, “Just thought you might need this today.”
In the family that gathers, imperfect and loud, around a worn kitchen table to say grace.
That’s Christmas.
It’s not gone, it’s just quieter now, waiting for us to listen again.
So this year, I’m going to look a little harder.
I’ll look past the sales, the headlines, the noise.
I’ll look for the faces that still glow when they say the name of Jesus.
I’ll look for the hands that reach out to help instead of hurt.
And I’ll look inside myself, to that still, small place where love was born in a manger long ago.
Maybe, when we stop trying to find Christmas in the world, we’ll discover it has been living inside us all along.
And maybe then, when I whisper again,
“I miss Christmas,”
it won’t be a complaint.
It will be a prayer,
and a promise to do better.
