Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Facebook Christmas Trap

This is a public service reminder about Christmas time on Facebook. I'll use my own house as an example.

What people show is this:


The Vicar's Christmas Tree, 2013

Pretty good, huh? Looks cozy perfect, all ready for Santa.

But what they don't show is this:

The same room that the Vicar's Christmas tree is in. FML.

Chaos. Same room, just a different perspective. It'll be together by the time people come over. Hopefully. And if not, they're just going to have to deal with it. Sorry guys.

Because you know what? No one's perfect, even if they look perfect on Facebook, so don't sit there freaking out about how your life doesn't look like their life. I do it too. I see the life milestones (weddings, babies) the professional milestones (ordinations, in my case, or new jobs) and I sit there and get in a spin because everyone's life is moving along, but mine seems stuck in the everyday mundanity of existence. It's not really stuck, because everyone's day to day life is mundane. That's the definition of mundane, actually: it comes from the Latin, mundus, world. It's your every day world. 

So, if it helps, here's my messy living room. Don't beat yourself up. Get ready for Christmas the best way that you can, but if it falls short of your wild expectations and is instead mundane, that's okay. It's okay because Christmas is when Christians celebrate the day God came to be mundane with us, in all the messiness that mundanity entails. 

4 comments:

  1. Robert Hartman's once made this point in a class at VTS and I always try to take it to heart. He said we all put the great stuff on FB but we never say "I really missed the point on that paper" or "I really didn't get that job I wanted and I'm mad about it." He of course said it more eloquently than that, but I tried to take that seriously these past months as I went through surgery and recovery. Without vulnerability there is no true community. So good for you, Becky -- I'd visit your messy living room any time (and I just live on the other side of the Hill)

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  2. Love this! Sometimes I need a polite slap in the face :)

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  3. Oh Becky... perfect.
    xoxox Merry Christmas.

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