“How was your Christmas?”
When I’m asked this question, I often cringe. I don’t hate Christmas. As a Christian, I understand and appreciate the greatest reason to celebrate. Yet it’s all begun to feel a bit old and stale. I’m growing tired of the hymns. Even the story of that first Christmas has lost some of its sparkle. I feel angry, irritable, and a little depressed.
My family doesn’t do gifts. Our main celebration consists of a meal at a restaurant when it suits everyone’s schedule, then spending the evening together. December 25th is just my elderly mother and me. We get along quite well but it makes for a quiet day.
I know I should be thankful for my own overflowing blessings. But this year, I feel jealous of people with lots of gifts to open, who spend the day with family, laughing, talking, and “making merry.” This is the first year I’ve felt such melancholy, such a sense of aloneness. Sadly, many people deal with brokenness and pain that is accentuated over the holidays.
I think of a family from my church who lost their 18-year-old daughter to suicide this past October. Although this beautiful young woman loved Jesus with all her heart, she struggled with anxiety and depression and one day, it all became too much. Although I believe she is safe in the arms of her Savior, I ache for her family and friends and how agonizing this Christmas must be for them.
Maybe our most common struggles this time of year are rooted in the unfair expectations we place on ourselves and on the holiday. Christmas, we are told, should be a joyous celebration with lots of nice gifts, food, fellowship, and fun. And there’s nothing wrong with all of that. But if “all of that” takes a wrong place in our hearts, if we feel left out or short-changed when our Christmas doesn’t measure up, we’ve believed a lie.
Of course, there is much genuine joy and happiness at Christmas. But life in a fallen world still intrudes. All that merriment can cover up broken, empty hearts, anger and bitterness, unforgiveness, secret abuse or addictions. Or some of that can come out in some pretty ugly ways.
And when we realize all those wonderful gifts we opened on Christmas morning will never satisfy our deepest longings, disillusionment sets in all over again.
The lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” reflect the fragile hopes many without Christ have for the holiday:
“From now on, our troubles will be miles away.”
Another line says,
“From now on, we all will be together, if the Fates allow.”
The writer of this song evidently looked to some vague fate, expecting a merry Christmas to be a magical elixir for his woes. But Christmas with all of its frills is not a magic formula for happiness. It is a spotlight shining on an event that changed the world forever and will change our hearts and lives if we allow it to.
Lasting hope and satisfaction come only from a relationship with the One Who was born into this world, God in human flesh, sent to experience life with us. He came to teach us how to live in his kingdom, one established by his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection.
This kingdom is forever, established upon and ruled by love and righteousness, populated and propagated by those with hearts and minds transformed and spirits reborn by the same Spirit that raised their King from the dead. These same hearts are overflowing with the water of life, beloved of the Heavenly Father, and fed by Jesus, the Bread of Life. In response, they turn their attention, affection and worship to the One Who alone is worthy.
Comments