It has become a Christmas tradition we could never have purposefully created if we had stretched our imaginations to their outermost limits. It’s not anything normal, like ceremonially placing the angel on top of the tree or gathering in front of the fireplace to sing carols on Christmas Eve. No, this family tradition is all about two tacky Power Ranger Christmas tree ornaments.
Do you remember the Power Rangers — those jumpsuit-clad superheroes of the 80s and early 90s? They were cheesy, popular and very marketable in their heyday. And my husband’s grandmother meant well when she mailed Power Ranger ornaments, personally inscribed, to our two sons one Christmas. She meant well, but she was several years too late, as my boys were WAY beyond the Power Ranger stage of life and into bigger and better diversions.
But the ornaments came – a red Power Ranger with one son’s name on it; a yellow one with the other son’s name blazoned across it. On the tree they went … and have gone each year since, much to my sons’ dismay.
This year, as we pulled out our Christmas decorations, we chuckled as we came upon the Power Rangers once again. My sons, quite past the age of caring about such trivialities and well beyond fearing that anyone would think they are Power Ranger fans, nevertheless let out collective groans when the Power Rangers came out. It brings me great delight to hear those groans each year and to watch my boys’ eyes roll up in their heads as the ornaments are placed on the tree. It’s one of the few means of maternal torture I have left.
And then there is the subsequent “Dance of the Power Rangers,” in which my sons rearrange the ornaments throughout the holiday season to make sure that their sibling’s ornament is prominently displayed while theirs is hidden on an obscure branch on the backside. On and on the dance goes throughout the holidays. Quite a bizarre tradition.
It’s amazing to think that all of this stems from very strong feelings evoked so long ago when my boys were given something that seemed embarrassingly ridiculous in light of their self-perceived levels of sophistication and maturity.
I guess there’s just something in us that rebels against being sucked back into a place we’ve left behind, especially if that place now looks silly or immature. Something in us says, “How could I ever have liked that … or done that … or thought that?”
Oh, how much sweeter life would be if we embraced this principle in our spiritual lives as well.
When we yield our lives to God, He gives us a brand new, clean slate. “The old things passed away; behold new things have come …” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “… Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead …,” the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3. In 1 Corinthians 13, he penned, “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”
Has God ever put His finger on some childish things in your life and asked you to leave them behind and “press on”? Maybe some bad habits, some bad attitudes, some self-centeredness? It’s okay to sentimentally hold onto some things, but not sin.
When we’re tempted to go back and embrace those childish ways, it ought to evoke strong feelings way down deep in our spirits – feelings that confirm that we’re way past that now, we’ve moved on, and we’ve left those tacky Power Rangers behind.