As I sit here in the glow of the Christmas tree, warm, well-fed, comfortable, I’m reminded of a Christmas eve long ago. On that holy night, Beth and I were anything but warm and comfortable.

2002 was our first Christmas together as a married couple. We were living in St. Louis but had planned on going back to be with my parents in Ottawa, IL for the holiday. My home church in town had asked Beth and I to play Mary and Joseph (she was going to be Mary) in their traditional Christmas eve candlelight service. I was excited to be heading home to see everyone.

Since we knew we’d be traveling, we didn’t bother shopping for things like a ham, or green beans and cream of mushroom soup for the big meal…an innocuous fact now, but you’ll see the importance soon.

The morning of Christmas eve broke cold and snowy across the St. Louis metro. Chunky flakes tumbled from a milky sky and began covering the ground and roads. To this Illinois boy, the snow didn’t seem like anything to be concerned about. Beth and I kicked around the notion of staying put.

I looked out the front door of our home and said to Beth, “It doesn’t look too bad, especially if we got going soon. The Jeep oughta be able to handle this.”

“Yeah, and we don’t even have a ham for Christmas dinner. We can’t just stay here with nothing to make for dinner.”

“Right, and they’re expecting us at church tonight for the service. It should be fine.”

It would not be fine.

We left around 1pm in my lifted 1995 Jeep Cherokee XJ. As soon as we hit I-44, we bore witness to a vehicular armageddon unlike anything I’d ever seen. A Chevy Suburban in the west bound lanes drifted right, then over corrected and skidded into the concrete median. I had never heard an accident before. Concrete, steel and sheet metal met in a snow muffled grinding crunch. I looked over at Beth and offered, “We could turn around at the next exit and head back.”

“But we don’t have a ham!”

“Right, the ham.”  Of course we’d need to risk our lives for lack of pork. See, I told you it’d gather significance.

We pressed on while the snow continued to fall and the four wheel drive in my Jeep grumbled along. We dodged stranded cars, swerved to miss vehicles in the progress of crashing and searched for some semblance of lanes on the highway. I just wanted to get out of St. Louis and away from all the inexperienced snow drivers.

Did I mention the thermostat had gone out in the Jeep just days before?

Well it did, and since the engine ran cool, only tepid air rolled out of the defrost vents. I could count on the bottom quarter of the windshield to remain clear enough to see through, anything above that was snow covered slush that the windshield wipers only partially removed.

35-40 miles per hour was about the safest top speed I could muster. Two hours into our trek, a Trans Am whizzed by us on the left. Ahead through the fading daylight and falling flakes, we watched his brake lamps light up then rotate left as his headlights pointed toward the ditch. The Trans Am followed the beams and became yet another victim of the snow covered roads.

After four hours of tense maneuvering, we arrived in Springfield, IL, which is normally a two hour trip. Beth’s parents live there so we stopped off to regain our composure and make a plan for the rest of the trip. At that point, making the Christmas eve service at my church was off the table, but the mission of spending Christmas with my parents was still on.

The weather reports were indicating a clearing north of town, which was a bona fide Christmas lie. The snow was really worse as we pressed northward. Snow and slush on the unheated Jeep windshield grew thicker and crustier. Spun out cars and trucks continued to punctuate the median and shoulder of Rt 39. After another four hours of white knuckle driving, the Jeep pulled into my parents’ driveway. Eight total hours on the road and we were finally able to exchange hugs with my folks at 10pm on Christmas eve.

Looking back on that trip now Beth and I both shake our heads. Why in the world did we let the lack of ham cause us to risk our lives? Also, there were plenty of people who could have subbed in for us as Mary and Joseph (and one couple ultimately did). Mostly I think it was our youth and inexperience coupled with our own expectations of what Christmases ought to look like. You’re with family. You go to a church service. You eat some ham.

Familiar Christmas music filters in now from another room in the house and finds me still sitting near this Christmas tree. Gifts litter its base and Teddy bears have mounted a siege ladder against it (I’m not sure why). Between spurts of typing, my thoughts drift to friends and family living through a Christmas they never expected. Some are alone. Some wish they could be alone. Some are unhappy, unfulfilled, empty. For a few, this is their first Christmas of many to come after a loved one has passed.

This is where the real Christ comes in. The Restorer. The Comforter. The baby born to heal all the brokenness we create and endure. We fight to make our lives reflect an unattainable commercially generated image of perfection.  Let that pass and invite Christ into your Christmas. It may not look like you hoped, but it will be more real than you ever imagined.