Comparison Is A Thief of Joy: Three Things To Remember When As You Approach Christmas

As we finish up our Thanksgiving left overs, begin the waiting season of Advent, put up the Christmas tree, and plan the various goodies we will make or buy for our family and friends…let us remember: Christmas is supposed to be joyful.

Comparison during the holidays can be the stealthy thief of this gift, especially as you return home and hear what friends were doing back at school, look at social media posts of people who are dating/engaged/married with kids, and read blog after story after post of what others have planned for the occasion. It can quickly lead you to feel as though you may be lacking because you’re not where you wish you were.

1) Life is a marathon, not a Hallmark movie

In college, we relied heavily on the generosity of our families to make the holiday special.

Then, we married young. Not a brag, just a fact. And as a result, our first Christmas as a married couple was celebrated only months into our first “real” jobs.

We were close to broke. We hadn’t figured out how to split celebrations between in-laws. And had just experienced a local tragedy.

Desperately, we prayed for Christmas to solve all of our woes, but alas, we had what we had and had to make due. In the end, it was beautiful. Our first family Christmas.

As more Christmases followed, we found ourselves in various states of life. One year we had two coaching stipends lined up in November and were able to be a bit extravagant with gift-giving. Another, we had only a toddler-friendly felt tree taped to the wall of our tiny two-bedroom cottage. This weekend we were able to put up our first full-size Christmas tree in our new home. And underneath, the kids will find a handmade gift, a family game, and one other treat because that is all the budget allows for at the conclusion of the roller-coaster of 2020.

Regardless of the planning and prepping and hoping that you do, Christmas is a season in life, and life happens over a lifetime, not a neatly condensed 90-minute film set in a small town in the middle of the mountains where only attractive people reside.

Sometimes a tight budget means a tight budget without the expectation of a wealthy stranger’s generosity. Sometimes it means your gift of baking is the gift you share with others (please…Monica stinks at baking anything that’s not from a box!). And other times, it is your turn to share generously with those that go without. And often, you get to experience each of these situations over time.

2) Ignore the angles and filters

Social media has distorted our perception of reality. Sweetly matching ensembles. Camera angles that avoid the clutter surrounding the scene. Filters that keep us looking younger, brighter, and less pregnant (please someone show me how to use that one).

Instagram, Facebook, etc. are excellent means of keeping in touch with loved ones, especially as we start to settle in areas far away from each other, as we experience a pandemic physically distant, and as our extended families grow.

But what remains crucial is to remember that what is posted is simply a snapshot of a posed moment specifically selected by the poster. Rarely does it summarize the day, give full insight into the experience, or offer the perspective of all involved.

While the joy shared on social media is not always insincere, it should not be used as a measuring stick for our own holiday. Realize that there is more than what you can possibly see in a picture: the beauty that is real life.

3) Throw out the Christmas Wishlist

How tempting is it to look at the gifts others receive and compare them to our own?!

Heck, we do this even when evaluating our talents next to our friends’, former classmates’, or sometimes our parents’. “Gosh, not only are they better at baking than I am, but they also got a new car for Christmas?!” (Monica’s baking wounds are showing)

Now is a popular time for posts and announcements about engagements, new babies, fancy attire, and exotic trips. Add to that, it’s usually the beautiful, funny, and wealthy friends who are happy with their careers that get all of this, too! We’re left looking at who we are and what we have, and somehow, we don’t check as many boxes.

Or so we perceive. It’s in this comparison of things that we lose sight of the gifts Christ has in store for us, those that can’t be bought online nor from your small biz owner pal.

We miss moments of harmony in a typically chaotic family-life, an outreach from a distant acquaintance that could turn into friend, or the carefully thought of yet simple gift or gesture from a loved one because they thought it was just what you’d like.

By focusing on what we don’t have and making a list of all the things we wish we had, we miss the opportunity to celebrate the gifts of others.

How great are their joys? How hard have they been to come by? We assume the pregnancy announcement is a direct dig at our singleness when, in fact, the couple has been suffering infertility. The new watch may be in celebration of a promotion after fear of unemployment given the pandemic.

Instead of mourning your perceived loss, rejoice for their gain!

Inviting Joy

Regardless of where you find yourself on the comparison spectrum during Advent, make it a point to invite Jesus in. Invite Him into your struggles with the life you have and the life you thought you’d have. Invite Him into your annoyance at others perfectly angled and filtered images. Invite Him to evaluate your Christmas Wishlist. By inviting Jesus, we are inviting the Joy of this season in.

Try as we might, we will always have less-than-ideal life circumstances to some extent. There will always be situations that we wish weren’t part of our reality, but they are. And in those times we can choose to either look at the circumstances of others and long for what could be, or we can invite Jesus into what is.

Inviting Jesus in, means letting Christ meet you in the midst of all the feelings of comparison and inadequacy and letting Him be the Joy you lack.

God became incarnate directly into a mess of a world. (Hello unwed mother giving birth in a stable while a king holds a vendetta over you, a helpless baby)

He knows your mess, whatever that may look like, intimately. Don’t be afraid to invite Him in.

Pax et gaudium. - Renzo & Monica