Tonight, my family and I ventured out to Doral’s Holiday Lights and Ice Extravaganza. It’s an annual Christmas event at the biggest park in town complete with food trucks, carnival rides, and entertainment. The highlight of the event is the tons of snow they haul in for our Miami kids. They even set-up these large bubble machines that blow pretty-realistic “snowflakes” in the air. They also heap up a pretty pathetic sledding hill.

The kids had a blast. They chased the “snowflakes,” trying to catch them on their tongues (put a pretty quick end to that). We waited our turn to go down the “sledding” hill on an inner tube. Ezra rode on my lap, his whole body shaking with belly laughs as we spun down the hill (for 3.4 seconds). And then the kids played in the mounds of snow, almost getting kicked out of the 4-6 year old area for having a “snowball fight” with each other (I was secretly cheering them on).

It was completely fake. I don’t mean to sound like a scrooge, because it really was a fun family evening, I just have a hard time swallowing that attempt at reproducing a winter wonderland. It was all pretty ridiculous for a girl who grew up in the Midwest, even for one who doesn’t miss those Midwest winters.

The whole night was really a dead-on metaphor for what Christmas has become. Without Jesus, you can’t reproduce the kind of life-changing joy that Christmas touts. Without a Savior, where’s the hope? Without Immanuel, there simply is no peace on earth. Without Christ, Christmas is like that fake snow: it’s not real, it’s not that deep, and it’ll be gone in the morning.

If I’m not careful, that’s exactly what Christmas can become. When I let the hustle outweigh the prayer, the presents outweigh the gratitude, and the outward adornments outweigh the inner prep, well, that kind of Christmas isn’t a real Christmas at all.

I’m taking my kids to Wisconsin this year. I want them to know what real snow looks like, the kind of Christmas wonderland you see in the movies. I want them to have a real snowball fight, to take a sled ride that lasts more than 2.4 seconds, and to catch non-toxic snowflakes on their tongue.

I also want to have a real Christmas, one with Jesus in it. Because any other kind of Christmas is just like Miami snow.