It's the craziest thing. I go on vacation, and everything just goes to hell. Sort of. In my regular life I've disciplined myself (in theory) to adhere to a rather strict schedule, with all duties and responsibilities penciled in. I wake each day conscious of what needs to be done, and then set about doing it. Then I go on break, and while I have countless tasks that would be great to do, few of them have a professor waiting on the other end. So I don't do them.

But that's actually not what I'm talking about. It's the craziest thing; I go on Christmas break to celebrate the whole birth of Jesus thing, and I find the best way to celebrate is to forget Him. I mean, it must be the best thing, because I do it every year. Paul once resolved to know nothing except Christ. It seems as if every Christmas I resolve to know everything except Christ. What to blame it on? The change in schedule doesn't help; playing with the nieces and nephews is suddenly inserted into a timeslot previously reserved for praying, that sort of thing. But that's not really what I'm talking about either. I'm not really big on the whole idea that you have to "do your devotions" every day to make God happy. I'm more referring to the complete absence of Christ from my casual consciousness throughout the last few weeks.

Funny how it progresses; you don't notice you've forgotten God at first. Then you notice, so you try to ignore God because you feel bad. Then it begins to affect the way you live. Mostly inside, but it always drips out onto the surface. Most noticeably in the area of fruits of the Spirit. I don't want to wait o anything (traffic, shopping lines) or I don't really care how I can make someone else's Christmas better. I basically increasingly revert to complete and total selfishness, all the while hiding it as best I can so that people will still like me.
I resolve while I was with you to know Christ and Him crucified. Or... to get me mine. Whichever.

So crazy how I do this every year. I even did advent with my wife this year to ward off the annual Christ purge. I'm not even talking about materialization of Christmas or any similar theme: this is not a matter of focusing on presents or getting selfish. The root is that I take advantage of the break from regular life to pretty much take a break from Jesus.

So weird...