Why Christmas Is A Time To Pause
And what Seneca has to do with it
Given the busyness of the holidays, this is the shortest piece I have written. I hope you enjoy it. And for those celebrate it, Merry Christmas.
On another note, I have been asked by a few subscribers about my writing process and where What then? is going in 2025. If this is of interest, let me know in the comments section, and I can write about it in place of an essay for next Tuesday.
It feels, at times, as though Christmas has become the breathless holiday: a fir tree, hustling from family to family, credit cards, traffic, boiling potatoes, hanging lights from roofs, school plays, baking cookies, wrapping presents in shimmering paper. For many, it is now a holiday of things and tasks. I have heard more than a few of the breathless say, “I am looking forward to Christmas being over so I can finally relax.”
What then? How can the origin story of Christmas reframe this breathlessness?
In 336 AD, Christmas was set to celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The contrast between the circumstances of his birth around 4 BC and Christmas in 2024 AD is staggering.
Mary and Jospeh were on foot to Bethlehem for the census of Emperor Augustus. They could not find an inn for the night and Mary was about to give birth. I can see Mary and Joseph walking the streets leading them further and further from town, searching for a safe haven to shelter in.1 She sees a manger with a bit of hay for donkeys or cattle or horses, and pauses: will it do? a feeding trough? It did well enough. Their newborn was placed in this manger on a bed of straw, probably beneath the open sky, while Mary and Joseph sat on the ground nearby in blissful exhaustion.
Suddenly, three wise men appeared out of the darkness from the east. They bore gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the newborn.2 Gifts. These were presents beyond the wildest imagination of those whose baby lie in a cud-filled manger, and who did not even expect a room at an inn. Life was hard. They expected nothing.
The significant point is that theirs was a life of scarcity.
What follows?
It is a paradox that our commemoration of this night can be one of breathlessness, while Mary and Joseph — and countless other families in dire straits — may have been eternally grateful for nothing more than a chance for their baby to survive the night and see the red fingers of the sun at dawn.
What happens now? The burden of scarcity has been lifted only to be replaced by a burden of another sort: the burden of surplus.
How can surplus be a burden? It may be that of the 109 billion humans ever to exist, only a sliver have known what it is to have far more than they needed to survive. We are wired to fight and love and crawl and throw and sprint to live in extremity, and then, once we come across a clear spring of water, or cool cave to keep out the rain, or a manger in an out-of-the-way spot, we pause to soak in the gift. It is striking that I have seen so little breathlessness in the less developed corners of the world despite so much suffering. I get the sense in these places that each day is a reminder that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and yet I see smiles and bright eyes. Scarcity leads to a mindset that each moment is, in a sense, a gift.
Scarcity is the pause at the manger, and an even longer pause when a shining slab of gold or supple satchel of myrrh comes to us out of the desert in our moment of need; surplus is the rolling of eyes and hastening of breath at resinous frankincense, and then waiting for it to be over so some other luxury — myrrh, gold, ornaments, heating, homes, stores, shows — can be gotten through for some hoped-for outcome that never seems to arise.
Our Roman Stoic, Seneca, knew this feeling well. He witnessed the birth of surplus with the growing affluence of the State, and left us a morsel of wisdom that has weathered the course of two-thousand years: “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.”3
We can tune Seneca’s advice to the tenor of Christmas in the year 2024 AD. What, then, is our silver? All that corrupts our contemplation and robs our breath. And what is our earthenware? That singular aspect of life that grows more and more scarce, never to be replaced, and yet which lies completely within our control — this exact moment in time.
Let us strip surplus to its bones and expose it for what it is. Let us “Simplify, simplify, simplify!”4
Christmas is not so much the holiday of breathlessness as it is the holiday of pausing. What, then, can we pause for? What is our plate of earthenware? Our manger? What scarcity can we turn to silver?
A scent of pine.
Time with kith and kin.
Homes lit like stars.
A last look at the moon before bed.
A warm room with four walls and a roof.
Old songs heard as though they were knew.
This precise second in time.
And the smile – and the pause – of a well-placed gift.
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See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Luke. 2:7
Matthew. 2:11
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus and Richard M. 1883-1969 Gummere. Letters From a Stoic: The Ancient Classic. West Sussex, United Kingdom, Capstone a Wiley Brand, 2021.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden: Or, Life in the Woods. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.. New York, Rinehart, 1948.
I find your thoughts and how you present them here are fascinating. I, for one, would be very interested to read about how you approach it!
Thanks Sam. As always, some great pointers towards wisdom. I'm very glad I discovered your substack this year, it has been a constant source of learning for me and lots of food for thought, both comforting and challenging. Much appreciated. Wishing you and yours a very happy Christmas and every blessing of the season! 'Nadolig Llawen' from Wales, UK