All I Really Want, by Quinn Caldwell

One thing I love about the Advent season is the opportunity to turn back to daily scripture reading, meditation, and prayer.  If your devotional life has fallen off a bit, Advent lends itself to daily anticipation of Christmas and redirecting your thoughts to "the reason for the season."  All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas accomplishes just that.

Quinn Caldwell, a United Church of Christ pastor in New York, has written this little book to encourage the reader to "create room--maybe just enough room--for God to show up."  His short pieces, one for each morning and evening of the Christmas season, are amusing and sometimes insightful and inspiring.  (By the way, I like the fact that the readings extend into January, completing the full 12 days of Chistmas.)

The tone is consistently light and breezy, easily accessible and broadly appealing theologically.  If there is an overall theme of the devotionals, it would include minimizing Christmas consumerism, enjoying the Christmas spirit, focusing on others, and being thankful to God for the gift of his son.  Caldwell strikes a nice balance between embracing the fun trappings of Christmas--recognizing "some Christmas things that have nothing to do with Jesus' birth, but in which I believe God is at work anyway" and encouraging Christmas decorations that "look like a party,"--and focusing on acts of service and devotion.

The devotional-ending prayers, only a sentence or two, are on target but sometimes I felt like they were a bit too trivial (though amusing):

"For evolution, thank you. . . . For not giving me a protruding brow ridge and shallow brain pan, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  Amen."
"God, I know I get on your nerves sometimes.  But you get on mine, too.  Thanks for loving me anyway.  Amen."
"OK, God, I'm willing to go [to church on Christmas].  But I'm totally going to hide out in my room for a week after that, and you can't stop me. Amen."

While most of the content is unobjectionable and will appeal to Christians (and other Christmas celebrators of all kinds) across denominational lines, there were enough hints of a rather liberal perspective that I suspect many believers will be put off.  Environmentalism, social justice, pacifism, and gay rights (the author is homosexual) are not central to the book, but raise their heads enough to raise some hackles for a more theological conservative believer.

But rather than focus on the many points of contention I may have with the author, I was happy to appreciate his consistent focus on turning our hearts to Jesus this Christmas season.  He ends on a hopeful eschatological note.  We may not get everything we really want for Christmas (such healing, reconciliation, peace) but "Advent isn't just about fulfillment.  Advent is always about longing, and it's always about longing that's not going to be fulfilled for a long time.  Christmas didn't fix everything; it started fixing everything."  And that is why Christmas is merry.



Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!