I bet you didn't expect that title for a Christmas Spirit Spot. I have to be honest and share with my readers that I struggle with Christmas, and have done so for most of my adult life. As a church ministry professional, my Advent is filled with daily deadlines, music rehearsals, and countless parties of colleagues and associates at the parish and in my workplace. This is on top of the other things that most everybody deals with in December: shopping, gift wrapping, sending out Christmas cards, getting involved in some meaningful community service activities for the needy. Finally, Christmas Eve arrives, with its magnificent parish liturgies, and I am involved with all of them as a choir director and/or accompanist.

But it doesn't end there for me. No sooner do I finish my final Christmas liturgy then I literally zoom out the church door in a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight home to Los Angeles for my family's Christmas dinner. I spend most of Christmas Day either waiting for a plane at the airport terminal or in the air, afterwhich I plow through the maze known as LAX trying to get to my rental car. I've been doing the Christmas-airport thing since I moved to San Francisco in 1986. The process became exacerbated in the year 2000 when I moved to Portland, Oregon.

Sometimes, I have made it home just barely in time for dinner with my siblings, their spouses, their children, and my mother — roughly a crowd of 26 or more. After dinner, we exchange presents, my first gift experience of the day. One Christmas, I drove home from San Francisco and was delayed for several hours because of traffic on Interstate 5. It was so late that everybody had gone home already. I was bummed.

I try to be a good participant in our family Christmas activities, but by the time I get home I am so exhausted that it's difficult for me to focus. Somehow, I smilingly plow through. Oh, it's great to see my family, of course, but I go to bed pondering what happened to the wonder of this great holy day. Simply put, there is no longer any magic in Christmas for me.

The end result of this impossible holiday routine is that I no longer look forward to Christmas. The majority of the day for me is spent in solitude at the airport and in a plane, slowly simmering as I struggle with long lines, flight delays, and similarly aggravated holiday travelers. I have to be careful during Advent. My irritation for how I spend Christmas Day can filter through in how I relate with people at work and in the parish. And then I have to be extra careful not to bring that irritation with me when I see my family. The last thing I need is to grow old and irascible, like Ebenezer Scrooge. Bah! Humbug!

I realize that this situation is not going to change. I could easily NOT be involved in parish ministry on Christmas, but I could never do that. Christmas without music ministry? Christmas without my parish community? Christmas without the Eucharist? No way! So what am I to do? I love my family, too, and want so much to be with them at the holidays.

It is sometimes helpful for me to reflect on Charles Dickens' story, A Christmas Carol. Unfortunate events from his youth shaped Scrooge's adult dislike for Christmas. He grew old lonely, feared and despised. But Christmas is too grand a celebration for even someone like Scrooge, whose change of heart is one of the great conversion stories in all of literature. Realizing that there is nothing he can do to change his past, he decides to focus instead on the present, in order to help shape the future for himself and all those around him. He realizes how much he has taken his associate, Bob Crachet, for granted and works to ensure a future for Bob's son, Tiny Tim.

Dear God, please don't let me become like grouchy old Scrooge. Change my heart, as Ebenezer did. Help me to love Christmas all over again with the wonder of a child. Help me to bring your joy to all those in my life, no matter how much holiday stress I endure. Help me to realize that everyone in my life — my co-workers, my parishioners, my family, even the strangers at the airport — all are reflections of your Son, born as an infant and in need of the love and support of his holy family. Help me reach out to the Christ Child in the way I reach out to others. Someone Is Waiting, God, for someone to love. Help me be someone to someone. Amen.

Need I say it? Merry Christmas, and God bless us, everyone!

Note to my brother, Jesse: Thanks for writing that cool new Christmas song!