Christmas Resolutions?

Yesterday I posted something on Facebook about my Christmas resolution.  

Such an unexpected thing, now that I think about it.  Usually, resolutions are made at New Year's.

But the phrase -- and the reality of it in my heart, was out there before I had time to stop and re-think it.  It seemed deeply natural to be making a Christmas resolution.

Maybe it's from all those repeated annual viewings of "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" -- two stories about Christmas Eve as a time of life-changing reflection and life-saving resolve.  Maybe it's from reading and hearing about the new film, "The Man Who Invented Christmas," and the suggestion the Dickens, in the story of Scrooge, created for us the image of Christmas as a time for self-examination, repentance and conversion of life.

And why shouldn't Christmas Eve -- as much as New Year' Eve, be a time for life-changing reflection and resolution?

As far as New Year's Eve is concerned, of course we measure and mark our lives by calendar years, and January 1 is a nicely identifiable time of beginning and then tracking a new resolve.  There's a sense of beginning afresh that seems to invite a moment of intentional self-improvement or correction.  The calendar has a nice, clean look to it -- beckoning like a field of new-fallen snow graciously covering up the old ways, giving us the freedom to start carving new paths in their place. 

But is not the day we celebrate the birth of the Christ not also a good time to take stock of our own life journey, and of where at this moment we feel called to a truer way of life?  For he is the one we regard as the true human, God's Word of life and for life made flesh among us.  And each time we come to celebrate and see his birth, and see him so weak and vulnerable in the manger and in our care, is there not some change, some different path, some new commitment or re-commitment to true living ourselves that we feel called to?  

For me, I woke up Christmas Day knowing a desire to read daily something I have so far read only randomly -- Fr. Richard Rohr's daily online meditation.  It seems a little thing.  But Rohr in particular writes so lovingly and gently about the eternal Gospel invitation to grow up into our truest Self, that at this stage in my life-journey I know that daily reading of his experience, strength and hope in this direction cannot help but have good and growing effect on my own life and spirit.

And isn't that what resolutions -- at either New Years' or Christmas Eve, are about?  

Maybe the difference for me right now and at this stage of my journey, is that a clean, blank field covered in fresh, fallen snow doesn't quite give me the direction I think I need to necessarily begin carving out the new paths I really need.  

But coming to the stable, seeing what life is given to all of us there, and feeling what new directions it evokes and what next steps it inspires within me, does.