Kicking Grandma Out of Christmas

Finals are finally over, and I’m found in that awkward Britney Spears “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman” phase called Christmas break.  I’m a full-grown adult with opinions and thoughts, but I’m also a guest and child in my parents’ home and I have to respect that.  Being in this phase puts me in a place where I can contribute to important family decisions - the first being “How do we incorporate your grandmother into our family Christmas.”

My first thought: “This is ridiculous. She is family. We just do family Christmas like we always have and let her come along for the ride.”

My grandmother, having suffered a stroke directly after the May 2010 floods, cannot sit in her wheelchair for long amounts of time, needs a fair amount of attention, and does not get out of her room much.  My parents and brother and I have the privilege and responsibility of sharing Christmas Day with her this year.  From mass, to opening presents, to Christmas dinner – we have to figure out how to best accommodate her needs while still sharing Christmas with each other.  We can set her up in a cozy recliner chair and let her doze off, or we can kick her out when she gets in the way and take her back to her bed.  These are both real options. 

This is a real problem.  Grandmothers everywhere are being kicked out of their family’s Christmas.  Grandmothers everywhere are being kicked out of their families.

Recently, I spoke with a pastor about bringing in younger families to his church.  The congregation is literally dying off from old age, and the new mission of the church is to reach some younger folks.  How do we do that? 

We kick Grandma out.

The first option given to me at this church was to throw out all the traditional music that these grandmas were used to, ignore these strong willed, southern women, and only play for the younger members.  Chris Tomlin.  Matt Redman.  Whatever you might hear on this Christian radio station.  Just kick grandma out.

Surprised and caught off guard, my first thought was, “Yeah, I can do that. Who likes grandmas anyways.”  But then I realized – The Church is a body with many parts.  The Church is a community of believers of all ages.  The Church is a family.  We can’t kick grandma out, but we can’t throw out the babies either.  

How do babies learn to speak?  They’re surrounded by family members who are speaking all the time – saying words that they’ve never heard, and eventually associating meaning with these words.  This is how we learn to worship.  We get our tradition from grandma.  Heck, we wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t have a grandma somewhere down the line. 

There is a time and a place for us to cater to only the young and old, but this place is not found in the times when we come together as an entire community and family.  We sing old songs because that’s what we were given by our grandmas, by the tradition of the church, by the history of our faith.  We bring our own new, young, hip, whatever songs to the table because what good is a family reunion without your aunt’s sweet potatoes and your cousin’s pecan pie. 

We can’t kick my grandmother out of Christmas because it is as much hers as it is ours, and just the same we can’t kick the strong willed southern women out of this church.  We won’t learn how to speak without being surrounded by it, and we can’t learn to truly worship without being surrounded by a community that worships together.