This article is by Lanier Ivester, author of Glad and Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide, available today from Rabbit Room Press.
by Lanier A. Ivester
In setting out to write a book, it is important to acknowledge who you are writing it for. This book is not for the polished or the elite, the people who have it all or who have it all together. It is not for social media influencers seeking inspiration to curate little squares of perfection on the internet, or for those seeking to impress other people with their cooking or decorating or craft-making or gift-giving.
It is, however, for the dear souls mentioned in Edmund Hamilton Sears’s verse, people crushed by life, toiling along under heavy burdens, desperate for a place of rest. It is for those who long to be re-enchanted by the very old, very true, very beautiful story of Christmas. It is for someone who might never have experienced a truly sacramental holiday in their own homes—and by sacramental, I mean quite simply a holiday which articulates unseen realities in practical, tangible ways. It is for the weary, the homesick, the wistful, and the countercultural. It is, above all, for the childlike, for it is only to such hearts that the greatest mysteries are unveiled.
I remember the first time I encountered Sears’s lyric. I was playing Christmas carols on the piano in my childhood home when the words fairly leapt off the page. I stopped playing and read them again. Then I typed them up on the computer in a large font, printed them out, and taped them to the refrigerator where everyone in the family could see them every day. I thought the words were beautiful, but something told me that the experience they pointed to was lovelier still. At seventeen years old, I confess that my sensibilities engaged more readily with the promise of those “glad and golden hours” than with any Dantean fellowship of suffering souls in their purgatorial climb. But I loved the idea of Christmas being more than a holiday. It was a resting place.
At the same time, I saw so many unhappy attitudes about Christmas in the world around me—from the jaded ennui of my peers to the haggard exhaustion of adults (mostly women), and I longed to remind the whole world that Christmas was still and always would be an absolute miracle. It was worth all the fuss and bother, the messes and the memories; it was, as Washington Irving had said, “king of the year,” for the King of creation had dignified the human race with his presence in our midst. No earthly shadow should diminish the glory of what those angels were singing about in the Bethlehem sky, and no amount of effort was too great for so grand a cause.
But I wasn’t the one doing all (or even most of) the work to bring this glory down into the practical experience of the people I loved best. That lot fell to my mother, and, as much as she treasured it, sometimes it made her tired. Sometimes, it even made her a little exasperated, like on Christmas Eve when my sister and I generated yet another unplanned mess in the kitchen, or an unexpected guest dropped in with an unexpected present, which sent Mama scurrying for the gift stash in the back of her closet for some suitable offering in exchange. There was the year that our pipes froze and then burst on Christmas morning, and the year that the goose she had been basting all day long with brandy and apricot glaze turned out to be full of shot and therefore inedible. There were Christmases spent on the phone with the doctor when my sister was too sick to get out of bed, and there were years in which Mama was stretched so thin with homeschooling three children that the holidays must have felt less like twelve days of merriment and more like the Twelve Labors of Hercules.
Nevertheless, Christmas in our house was a magical respite from the rest of the year; a time in which time itself seemed to bend to the greater laws of divine and familial affection. Looking back, I know it cost my mother considerable effort, enormous intention, and great love. But I hailed those glad and golden hours in my heart because they had always been just that. Mama had seen to it.
I remember standing in the kitchen one Christmas with one of Mama’s friends. It was a different year, but still, the Sears lyric was taped to the fridge—a bit dog-eared from being removed and replaced over successive holidays. She paused to read it, and then she laughed.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said with a shake of her head. “But who has time to rest this time of year?”
Her words, and the tone in which they were spoken, made me feel self-conscious and green. What did I, an idealistic teenager, know of real weariness, or even of real rest, for that matter? People were tired, and sometimes the holidays were just really hard. Not everyone had grown up in a home where the good times far outweighed the bad times, and some people had reason to distrust some of the sentiment and excesses of Christmas.
Nevertheless, something in me silently pushed back. I knew that Christmas did not have to be a desperate round of commitments and tasks. I knew that even the humblest experiences could be shot through with eternal radiance and that there had to be some middle ground between “too much” and “not enough,” some lovely, overlooked via media that could cut through the thickets of overdoing and overwhelm (and overeating and overspending!) with which a modern holiday has come to be associated. There was more going on here than childhood memories and food nostalgia, more even than the simple acknowledgment of Christ’s birth. In celebrating Christmas, we were not just remembering; we were reliving the fact that God had become one of us.
Later, as I started to tease out some of these intimations in my own home, I began to understand just how tricky it could be to create a meaningful holiday without losing sight of what it was all about. Christmas was a resting place, but it was one that must be cared for and cultivated. Preparations were important, particularly if I wanted to give my people a thoughtful taste of a coming kingdom that was already in our midst, but those preparations would always have to give way to the people themselves, not the other way around. Furthermore, even the most sacramentally intentional Christmas could be a lot of work, a sort of practical liturgy of generosity, hospitality, attention, and love, and sometimes I would get tired. Sometimes I would lose my bearings, or my way, or my temper, or my peace, and need to be shepherded back to my soul’s rest. And always, I would need the sweet simplicity of Christ.
For over two decades, I have grappled joyously with these tensions because I believe that there is gold at their heart. I believe that it is not only possible, but crucial, to steward these set-apart days in a way that makes space for mystery and wonder amid the rituals and traditions of our lives. And I believe that ritual and tradition are always the servants of relationship, with God and with other people. Without relationship, even the most exquisite holiday is about as lovely as a child banging a pot with a stick.
And so, if you are tired, or disillusioned, or curious about shaping a holiday season that makes present the astonishing fact of God-with-us, then I would like you to consider this book my gift to you. It’s not a manual or a how-to, or a glorified to-do list, but a companion, in the neighborliest sense of the word. Whether you choose to read this book, this story, simply to enter into its twists and turns, its hopes and sorrows, its people and its places, or whether you elect to participate in it yourself via its many recipes, crafts, and holiday suggestions, my prayer is that you will find a friend in these pages and that the ideas and activities with which these reflections are threaded will be like small domestic liturgies, tangible acts that integrate what we believe with what we do. You might try only a single recipe or craft each week, or even each year; you are welcome to pick and choose, selecting only that which suits your needs and desires. For the meals and menus and ideas in these pages, even the suggestions themselves, are merely that: suggestions to help you contemplate your own holiday with creativity and significance.
It is, above all, an invitation, regardless of your age, marital status, or living situation, to experience Christmas as a place of rest—not in spite of, but in the very midst of the merriment of these glad and golden hours. His glory is already breaking over the rim of the world, my friends. Let us turn eastward—with the devotion of our hearts and the work of our hands—and watch for the steady rise of our great Daystar.
Lanier Ivester is a homemaker and writer in the beautiful state of Georgia, where she maintains a small farm with her husband, Philip, and an ever-expanding menagerie of cats, dogs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and peacocks. She studied English Literature at the University of Oxford, and her special area of interest is the sacramental nature of everyday life. For over a decade she has kept a web journal at lanierivester.com, and her work has also been featured in The Rabbit Room, Art House America, The Gospel Coalition, and The Cultivating Project, among others. She has lectured across the country on topics ranging from the meaning of home to the integration of faith and reason, and in both her writing and her speaking she seeks to honor the holy longings of a homesick world.
She is also the author of Glad and Golden Hours from Rabbit Room Press.