I have been searching for magic my entire life. That same magic I felt when I still believed Santa was real—his existence made evident by the bits of cotton left behind in the fireplace and the midnight rumbles I swore could only be hooves on the rooftop. The kind of magic that looks like fireflies lighting up the mountain sky at dusk, or the iron gates welcoming us into our very first Disneyland adventure. I have craved these moments for as long as I can remember, hunting for them like pearls in a clam or bits of seashells washing up in the sand. 

So when Christmas season comes around, I am all in. I want to see all the light displays and build gingerbread houses and watch Christmas movies with hot chocolate every night. Each year, I make it my personal goal to set a new tradition– my own feeble efforts at making the holidays more memorable. 

Although lately I have found myself on a different mission. A hunt not for the magical but the miraculous. When I think of magic I picture wishes and genies in bottles. I conjure up images of glitter and lights and grandiose gestures. But if the magical is the fulfillment of wishes then the miraculous is the fulfillment of Hope . Where magic belts out, the miraculous whispers. The miraculous connotes longing and honest moments of crying out. I think of all the times I so desperately needed a miracle and then, like the first raindrop after a drought, it came. My hope fulfilled. Hope is such a prevalent theme this time of year because Jesus’ birth was Hope fulfilled for a world that was longing for the Messiah. 

Where the magical says more, the miraculous says make room.

Please hear me out—I am not knocking Santa or Elf On The Shelf or any other family tradition so many of us love to partake in. But I recently began to wonder why year after year I outdo myself in gifts and extravagant gestures only to be surrounded by mounds of wrapping paper on Christmas afternoon wondering if I missed the mark somewhere. How can I shift my focus so that the gifts and the magic and make believe fade into the background of a far more beautiful, lasting, holy narrative? One that says the birth of Christ was filled with anticipation and hope-filled waiting. And that maybe if we pursue that story enough, we can tap into that same longing the believers in Bethlehem felt leading up that virgin birth 2,000 years ago.

Maybe the miraculous is precious and exciting enough to stand on its own. Maybe I don’t need to spruce it up with my own man-made ideas. I’m convicting myself with these words right now because my tendency is to manufacture more magic, more moments, more gifts for my family, hoping they will somehow add up to a sacred experience. But in all my doing and striving I often leave little room for the Holy Spirit to sweep in and pierce hearts. There is such beauty in a simple Christmas carol. In the lighting of a candle or the quiet discussion of who Jesus is. Let’s fight to make more room for the miraculous by aiming to not fill every square inch of our homes and hearts with fabricated magic that eventually wears out. 

Where the magical says more, the miraculous says make room. Where magic paints a false narrative for our children that says the world can be perfect (or perhaps already is), the miraculous assures us that even though we experience heartache and suffering now, we serve a perfect God ushering us into a perfect Heaven and His Hope will carry us there. It is through the miraculous where we can bring our broken selves to the altar, with all our glaring imperfections, and be made whole again. The miracle of the season is that it takes no conjuring, no hustling, no manufacturing to experience the quiet, sacred, all-consuming love of our Savior.

Last year my dear friend Kate wrote a beautiful blog post sharing her family’s Advent tradition. You can read about it here. We may be a couple days into December, but I promise you it’s not too late to begin.