Falling Mittens and Other Christmas Disappointments


I was a child, probably in grade school.  Christmas break was official and I was curious.  I was at “that age”.  You know of the age of which I speak.  “That” age - the age of question, the age of curiosity, the age of really wanting to know the full truth behind the little fat guy in a red suit.  Was he real?  Did he fulfill all the gifts on your wishlist?  Did he really know if you were naughty or nice?  Did he eat cookies set aside for him as a reward for breaking and entering?

I had my suspicions.  Friends at school called those who still believed in this mystical fabrication of legendary tales of old Babies.  Was I a baby for still believing?


“Could you go into my room and find my scissors?”  came the unsuspecting voice of my Mother in the kitchen.  I, tucked in my room reading a book, saw this as an opportunity to find the truth alongside finding her scissors.


Her room was a sacred space of functional sleeping quarters and magic.  Mom usually kept her sewing machine out during the Christmas season.  Behind her bedroom door, to the humming of her sewing machine, she created dolls and clothes and Christmas dresses and ornaments and stockings.  The mystery that surrounded that locked bedroom door was second only to the mystery Lucy must have felt approaching the wardrobe.  Behind that locked door, another world of creativity and wonder awaited.


Now, I was being invited into this sacred space.  On the queen-sized perfectly made bed lay the odd piece of tape used to wrap a gift.  Occasionally a thread could be spotted that she must have discarded from a sewing project still kept secret.  Tidy.  Spotless.  Nothing to be discovered by a pesky grade schooler.


In my hand I carried a mitten.  I’m not sure why the mitten accompanied me into her room but nevertheless I had a mitten.  I know this to be true because that mitten changed the course of my life.  


After spotting her scissors laying on the dresser on the other side of that perfectly made bed, I made my way towards them when that fateful mitten dropped from my hand onto the shag carpet that entangled my socked toes.  Bending over on fragile limbs to get my mitten, I spotted something that caught my eye.  My mitten, precariously and partially laying under her comforter, lay dangerously close to something that had caught my vision and was also igniting my imagination.


Slowly and deliberately, with stealth precision, I carefully lifted the edge of the comforter with a hand I’m sure was trembling with anticipation.  Not one prone to risks, I lifted the edge just enough to see there was a box.  Heart racing, the box then led my mind to believe enclosed was a game.  This was not a game worthy of me letting go of that edge of the comforter I held in my shaky hand along with any hope of finding the truth.  This was a game I had circled in the Sears and Roebucks catalog.  That sacred book kept all my Christmas wishes circled and identified for my parents to see.  Those circles represented the longings of my heart.  And this very box that lay before me had the potential of not only being the fulfillment of what I longed for in the Sears and Roebucks catalog but also the answer to my truth seeking.


I did it.  Despite my rule-following demeanour and uber responsible behavior, I pulled the box from its hiding place under the bed.  Exhilarated from rebellion and nervous from the potential risk of being discovered, before me lay the very game my red marker had circled in the catalog.  As quickly as I had entered into criminal behavior I proceeded to hatch a covert plan.  I decided to keep my secret buried deep in my mind and discover the truth on my own terms.  I would not ask my parents about the identity of Santa.  Potential evidence now presented itself before me.  


I would wait.  Come Christmas morning, if this game appeared under the tree as a gift from my parents, any doubt about St. Nick would be crushed.  If, however, I discovered that this very game became a gift from the fatman himself, I would have hard evidence to debunk Mr. Claus.  My parents would be counted  among the players in a global coverup and Santa was indeed not real.  


The nights leading up to Christmas Eve were torturous.  I would script scenarios of the unveiling.  Part of me wanted my parents to be the gift givers.  But, a bigger part of me wanted so desperately to believe that Santa flew through the celestial sphere on a sleigh directed by flying reindeer.  I wanted to embrace the folklore of Santa Claus, the North Pole, Elves, Rudolph, and all things I would soon find out were just the stuff of fairy tales.  


And then just as unexpected as the request that came from my Mother’s voice from the kitchen to go on a search and rescue mission for her scissors came my answer to my question.  Christmas morning brought gifts under the tree from my parents and gifts unwrapped on the couch from Santa.  Among my bounty, unwrapped on the couch, was the game.  There it lay.  Before me the answer and the end of my childhood nievate.  Santa wasn’t real.


I enjoyed my game.  I enjoyed the gifts.  However, that Christmas marked the end of my belief in Santa.  It was the first among a long line of disappointing Christmases.


Let’s face it.  Christmas disappoints. 


I could continue with a long list of detailed stories depicting tale after tale of Christmas disappointments.  They would be long and varied.  They would include the Christmas that my Dad, my sister and I spent Christmas in a third-world country without  my Mom.  She, at the age of 38-years-old, suffered a stroke just months prior to Christmas.  Due to the lack of medical treatment offered to her in our remonte Air Force base in Turkey, she was flown back to the United States to recover while my Dad tied up our life, packed up our belongings and navigated a 17-year-old and a 12-year-old back to the United States.  I don’t remember the presents.  I don’t remember a Christmas tree.  I just remember the disappointment of being separated as a family.


My Christmas disappointments would include another Christmas separation.  Having just moved to Austria in March of 2009, we received word from family in the United States that Chris’ father had unexpectedly passed away.  The day before Christmas Eve, I drove my husband to the airport for him to say his final goodbyes to his father.  As he boarded a plane, he would fly thousands of miles only to get stuck hours from home due to a snow storm that caused havoc on air traffic and brought further disappointment from exhausted travelers now confined to airports as places of Christmas celebrations.  As Chis nestled in for an uncomfortable night on a plastic airport chair, I tucked in three girls entrusted to my care in our new home in a new country.  This was our first Christmas away from all extended family and now due to this unexpected passing, we four girls were away from the man that secured our foundation as a family.  We decorated Christmas cookies and opened packages but it wasn’t that same without Chris.  That Christmas left me disappointed at the turn of events.


There are more.  The gift I didn’t get.  The gift I gave and the recipient didn’t hail my contribution as their favorite.  The family discord.  The lack of money.  The distance of miles.  The recipe that didn’t succeed.  The anxiety that drowned my enthusiasm.  


On and on.  


Disappointment after disappointment.


I have a friend.  Rose.  Rose is wise and quiet.  She listens more than she speaks.  And when she speaks, her wisdom is elevated by the quality of her few words.  She doesn’t need a lot of words to communicate the deeper truths that she has discovered in her quietness before a holy God.  


Rose says that we can see God most clearly in contrast.  For example, you don’t know how beautiful the light is until you’ve been in darkness.  That’s good.  That’s profound.  That’s the wisdom of Rose.


As I look to my disappointing past, the Christmases that have come and gone, I’m oddly thankful.  I’m thankful that the gift didn’t come or the recipient didn’t rejoice.  I’m thankful that there was discord and lack and distance.   I’m thankful for the lack of success and lack of peace.  For it was in those things that so successfully disappointed that contrasted so powerfully against the beauty of a God who never disappoints.


God’s people are all familiar with disappointment.  


Looking back to the virgin who carried a baby as well as a tarnished reputation, the people God chooses experience disappointment.  I’m sure Mary was disappointed by the way in which the Savior of the world crashed into her plans of marriage and then baby.  


Looking back to the people of Israel who believed in a Messiah who would clobber the Roman empire that smothered them with overwhelming taxes and social prejudice, I’m sure they were disappointed.  The Messiah they waited for was never imagined as a soft, cooing baby lying helpless in a stable.


Yet.  The disappointment drives us to the Promise Maker and Promise Keeper.  


Despite my desire to desperately believe in a Santa flying through the celestial spheres, the North Pole, Elves, and Rudolph, the truth of the real meaning of Christmas has changed the course of my life just as that falling mitten landing under my Mother’s bed comforter changed the course of my life as a child.


Despite a Christmas separated from our Mother, the reunion of seeing her and the celebration of a new year together as a family with my Mom well and healthy superseded the disappointment of a treeless and presentless Christmas.


Despite not having the company of my dear husband during our first Christmas abroad, seeing the sweet ways God took care of every detail of his travel and me and my girls while we celebrated apart from him was spectacular.  


O, where is the thrill of Hope because a weary world rejoices?  Dare I fail to recognize the disappointments of the season as a gift pointing to the true spirit of the season? Never!  The thrill of Hope is the thrill of belief in a person.  The weary world, including my weary person, can rejoice because of that Hope in which we place our very lives.


I want to always be disappointed with the things of this world.  Now, more than ever, I want the lights and the gifts and the marketing of Christmas to desperately disappoint.  I was not designed to be fulfilled by lesser things.  I was not designed for counterfeit happiness and short-term thrills.  I was designed for the real thing.  I was designed to walk through the disappointments alongside the presence of the One to whom my affections belong, especially at Christmas.

I look back to that revealing Christmas as a child.  Just as I tentatively lifted the comforter to see what lay under the bed, I want to empower that child-like curiosity to continue to lift the comforter, so-to-speak, on the things of God.  I want more.  And until I am truly disappointed with those things that offer temporary fulfillment, I will continue to look in the lesser places for the greater joy.


Today, I will hang an old mitten on my Christmas tree.  It won't match my decor.  It will look out of place.  But, oh my, how it will trigger the deeper things in me and call me to be disappointed so that in Him only I will rest.


From that little pesky grade school girl, Merry Christmas.  Discovering the truth will always lead to the greater things.  And that, dear ones, will never disappoint.


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