all that christmas music — Hilary Yancey

Preston and I were driving to the airport this week (the not fun kind of drive, where we know it'll be a little while before we can see each other again), and he was playing a CD of Advent and Christmas music. It doesn't surprise me that much anymore to discover the things that this man knows and loves are close to my heart - old hymns set to new sound, simple melodies that whisper through the cold drive that we are waiting for the Messiah, that we are anxious for him, that we are hopeful, that we are preparing the way.But since that drive, I've been listening to all that Christmas music - the kind that plays in the Gap and on the Michael Buble Holiday Pandora station, the music that surrounds us with dancing sugarplums and dreams of warm fires and friends and falling in love.And a dear friend was talking on Wednesday about how couple-y Christmas can feel. How that can be hard.All those images of ice-skating on Frog Pond, you know? And the way that the TV seems to tell us Christmas is really about love, and love is really about romantic love, and romantic love is really about Kay Jewelry, and the logic twists and turns around us and we feel trapped in a story we were never writing ourselves, left to ourselves.Last winter I wrote this post for Lisa-Jo, about how I wondered if my skinny jeans would still fit while I ate my way through a bag of peppermint bark looking at all the heart shaped icons on Facebook. How I felt sitting in those jeans and how I didn't believe it would happen, how I told God that it would not happen, how God said, "I have named your life beautiful," and how desperately and deeply that has changed me.This year is the first year I'll have ever had someone to call mine on Christmas.The first year I'll have the chance of kissing anyone under any kind of hanging plant at a holiday party, or clinking champagne glasses with. And I sing along with the holiday stations thinking about love, how to keep it safe from too many commercials telling stories to us in our skinny jeans or our pjs eating our peppermint bark watching hearts pop up on Facebook or another rerun of the holiday love movies.And while I love the Christmas music, the warmth and familiarity of it, while I play the Pandora stations and you might even catch me swaying my hips in time to Lady Antebellum in a store this weekend -I want to tell you that the love I love most this Christmas is the love of the man who took me to Panera and to see Frozen because he knew I would like it. The way he catches my eye and does the dishes and tucks my feet under the blanket on the couch because he knows I get cold. The way he kisses my forehead, just because.And the love I love most is not less than this: the love of my mother, who laughs with me as we curl up under the covers. The love of my father, who wraps me tight in hugs sometimes for no apparent reason, other than he loves me and wants to remind me, right there in front of the stove. The love of my brothers, with their fiercely handsome hearts, the way that they teach me to give more of myself, to listen better, to drink Dunkin' Donuts and watch Despicable Me. The love of my sister, our FaceTimes with the baby nephew, the love of my brother-in-law and laughter over sausage pizza and the quiet of the family gathered together. The love of the friends that call and text and write and give of themselves in the way that teaches me how - the love that teaches me how to love.That's the love I want to sing about, in between Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe" and Michael's "Cold December Night" and someone else's something else that tells us Christmas is only one picture of love.Because Love comes down this Christmas, because Jesus becomes known in the hugs and laughter and making space for each other, passing around the peppermint bark.Because I want the fullness of love for us this Christmas.Love,hilary