It’s that time of year again when the economic expectations of Christmas circle the news. At the moment, fear surrounds Christmas economics. For most retailers, this is make or break season, and this year clearly carries special problems. Politicians, money managers, store owners, employees all hold their breath with both anticipation and dread as December 25 draws closer.

The church also holds its breath with anticipation when looking toward December 25. This Sunday, we begin the season of Advent: the period of waiting and special watchfulness in hope of light for an increasingly dark world. The prophets of old have indicated that God is on the move. There may yet be given to us a savior, one whose very presence will bring wholeness and healing. There may yet be light again, light so pure that all darkness is cast out before it.

So there are two Christmases in the air: First is the economic Christmas, the place where Santa Claus arrives and distributes gifts and laughter and surprises and hopefully what everyone really wants. Then there is the holy Christmas where a loving redemptive God gives people what they need, the things that lead to purity of head and heart and hands. The economic Christmas is very, very important to the resurrection of financial health in our world. The holy Christmas opens the world to the possibility of Easter, where we see the resurrection of forgiveness and reconciliation and transformation.

I think we need both. We need to give gifts to one another and have fun and sing Christmas songs and eat too much and watch our loved ones open special presents and laugh as our children and grandchildren have as much fun with the brightly wrapped boxes the toys came in as they do with the toys themselves. We need to celebrate abundance in the midst of some scarcity with creativity and lights and colors and family and friends and strangers. We also need to recognize that God is indeed on the move and it is a movement of reconciliation; a movement to include the outcast, the foreigner, the lost, the least among us. It is a movement that begins in the humblest of places with the humblest of people and seems to end in agony on a cross. But that end is only a beginning, just as the baby in a stable is only the beginning. The beginning of hope and rebirth. Thanks be to God.

So, be sure and say lots of “Thank You’s” to God and to each other during the Thanksgiving holidays and then go forth to celebrate with anticipation and exuberance the two Christmases before you.