This week we kicked off our advent series by contrasting the two kinds of Christmases we might experience this season. The first we called, “Suburban Christmas”. It is pretty, clean and happy. This is the Christmas Bing Crosby yearned for in “White Christmas”. This is the Christmas we see in Hallmark movies (usually filmed in Maple Ridge) and this is the Christmas which we seldom actually experience. Why? Because if we are honest, our experience of Christmas is not pretty and clean but broken and challenging. It is a lot like the first Christmas. The first Christmas was full of confusion (where is God while we struggle under Roman occupation and why is Mary pregnant?), brokenness (Herod killed a bunch of baby boys) and it is full of details we would not expect God to endure upon coming to Earth (riding a donkey, born in a smelly stable, etc). The real Christmas story comforts us a lot more than our plastic suburban Christmas. That is what we as Christians celebrate every year.