The pictures on the Hallmark cards at don’t tell the whole story do they? They don’t show…
faces stained with tears while quietly hanging ornaments on trees with missing spouses or children to share in tree trimming this year
… drives back and forth to hospital bedsides, and nursing homes and rehabs visiting family who are not well
…empty apartments, beds and seats next to singles who feel especially aware of their lack of coupleness during the most wonderful time of the year
We all have pictures in our mind of how Christmas should be. Visions of warm and cozy a moments, filled with family and love and joy. Our pictures simply do not include suffering, sorrow and pain. These feel so out of place and no cup of cocoa or festive carol can change it.
Sometimes Christmas is hard. Not in the “wow, how will we afford to get the toys? Or geez, we have too many commitments this month!” hard. No, this is the kind of hard that makes you feel like you may not be able to stand the pain that wells up from the deepest places in your heart, threatening to engulf you. The kind of hard that crying and yelling and sleeping does not relieve.
This is grief. And grief and Christmas are unlikely companions.
Yet, the very first Christmas, before Santa and Macy’s and Black Friday and Ugly Sweater Parties, carried it’s own share of grief. A young woman outcast in her community, through scandal. A man unsure how to care for his new wife and their coming child. Poverty, injustice, pain and loneliness were hand in hand with the birth of promise, redemption and new life. Jesus came into our pain and our poverty, our need and our mess to live with us. He did not paint a Norman Rockwell portrait with his arrival. Everything did not get better for those around him right away- in fact, it got worse. Children were murdered, his parents forced to flee in the night- injustice and pain seemed unquenchable.
Yet, the promise of his birth was Emmanuel. Christ with us. We were no longer alone and his eventual death and resurrection would secure an eternity of joy and peace that no suffering can ever touch. Christmas is a promise of Christ with us. We are not alone in our grief. We will not be defeated by sorrow. We will not be swallowed up in suffering.
If this December meets you in the midst of darkness, take heart. It was a dark, dark night when Light first arrived, and real life, in Christ can never be taken from you. Hold on to the promise of Emmanuel.