After all the gifts have been unwrapped and the waiting is over, it is so easy to experience the after-Christmas-blues.  That is normal!  Here is an excerpt from  A Homecoming Christmas: Sensing the Wonders of the Season about why we experience after-Christmas letdown and what to do when it happens.

The Letdown
When Christmas Seems Over
By Emily Sutherland

For many of us, Christmas is followed by a strange sadness—the “letdown”—after all the anticipation and celebrating.

We can’t help it. We are humans living in an imperfect and ever-changing world. We have baggage, and expectations, and sin that reminds us every single day—especially at Christmas—that even this world’s most wonderful experiences will never live up to the wonderful World for which we were made.

The Good News of Jesus is – our redemption didn’t just buy our forgiveness for all the shortcomings that are bound into our nature here on earth. Thirty-two years after that Bethlehem baby was laid in a prickly manger of hay, He purchased with His very life a Home for us where the celebration is perfect—where the music and the feast and the relationships and the atmosphere and the unsurpassed beauty are everything we have ever longed for. At last, we will no longer be trying to recreate something too eternal for our senses to contain. We will living be in the midst of it all!

“Perfection” is a myth here on earth. We will never have a perfect Christmas, a perfect family, a perfect experience. Our greenery will dry out and make a mess; our poinsettias will die. Those mouth-watering treats will all be consumed, after which we will likely gain a few pounds. And we will most likely give and receive some wrong gifts now and then—gifts that may be returned for something else. But don’t let any of those small disappointments rob you of the joy that was born for you at Christmas. Rather, let them point you to that day of all days when we will finally celebrate our first perfect Christmas.

For now, it is worth every ounce of energy we have to bring honor to this holy story with our very best offerings. As we attempt to communicate the greatest story ever told, it takes all five of our human senses to begin to grasp even a piece of it. Yet even then, we need the touch of our Savior.

He longs to celebrate with us—
To hear us sing and tell His Story.
He delights in seeing the beauty that we create for His birthday.
He takes joy in our personal incense offerings, whatever they may be,
and sits at our feast as we share His abundance.
And perhaps best of all, He delights to embrace us with His Holy Presence!