The other day I had a woman in my office making the obligatory small talk of the season.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “not even close.”

“Well, have you at least set up your tree?”

“No,” I said, wishing the conversation over, but she was persistent. She told me that she had three trees and their Christmas village set up. She had started shopping in August, and that she just had to buy gifts for her cousin’s granddaughter and her neighbor’s niece and she would be all done.

“No, I haven’t done my shopping either,” I told her.

“You’ve got to do something,” she said.

I thought for a minute and then said, “I’ll get out the nativity set tonight.”

She beamed at me and went on her way.

I didn’t get it out.

The truth is this has been a very hard season. Thanksgiving was rough. December has gone downhill from there.

I could bore you with all details of my messy life, but suffice it to say that it’s like the matted fur of a cat that doesn’t groom itself and becomes impossible to get a comb through. And that matted mess shows up in the worst places. Ignoring doesn’t fix it.

I need to do something — but it’s not Christmas decorating.

The only semi-Christmassy thing that I’ve done is read an Advent devotional called Watch for the Light. It’s a book I’ve read before, but it beckoned to me from the shelf and I heeded its call.

Yesterday’s devotional in it was by Annie Dillard: Bethlehem She describes going to ground zero in Bethlehem, to the very place where Jesus was born.

As if, I thought skeptically, we know where that is.

I have a friend who says the Christmas story is just a fable, a nice tale made up by people, but without a lick of truth to it.

I think he is just as wrong as the ground zero crowd who make their pilgrimage to the place Dillard describes: “A fourteen-pointed silver star, two feet in diameter, covered a raised bit of marble floor at the cave wall. This silver star was the X that marked the spot. Here, just here, the infant got born.”

She goes on a few paragraphs later, “Any patch of ground anywhere smacks more of God’s presence on earth, to me, than did this marble grotto. The ugliness of the blunt and bumpy silver star impressed me. The bathetic pomp of the heavy, tasseled brocades, the marble, the censers hanging from chains, the embroidered antependium, the aspergillum, the crosiers, the ornate lamps — some human’s idea of elegance — bespoke grand comedy, too, that God put up with it. And why should he not? Things here on earth get a whole lot worse than bad taste.”

Things here on earth get a whole lot worse than no Christmas decorations, too. Seriously.

Here it is, Christmas Eve. The bits of red and green in my kitchen are not decorations I got out, but gifts.

• A Santa tin filled with rum balls. The man who gave them to me apologized, “Usually my wife makes them, but, you know…” His voice trailed off. I did know. Her dementia is more and more evident. “I may have added way too much rum,” he said. We both laughed.
• A plate of cookies topped with a bow, another gift from one of my regular office visitors.
• A wrapped gift that is clearly a book. “Put this under your tree,” the person who gave it to me had said. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I had no tree.
• A few other small wrapped gifts, the kind co-workers give each other. My unfinished gifts still sit on my desk.

And yet, and yet — into this undecorated unholy world, I welcome the Christ.

Lord knows, I need Him this year more than ever.

He doesn’t give one whit about the trappings. He wants to patiently unmat the mess that is me. The question is, will I let Him?