Christmas is hard

It’s been about 4 years since I’ve been excited about Christmas. I remember my first Christmas in Nashville, decorating my Christmas tree, listening to David Bazan’s Christmas album, wondering if I’d ever feel like myself again. That year I’d finally admitted that my faith wasn’t working for me anymore, and when Thanksgiving rolled around and twinkle lights started popping up everywhere, I felt the cold fingers of grief wrap around my heart from the inside, pulling me away from the season I love more than anything.

In college my friends called me Buddy the Elf. Actually that’s been my favorite movie for like, longer than its even been around. The cheer, the bundled hugs, the magic of everyone agreeing to decorate and give and party and sing together…all of it has enchanted me with the enthusiasm of a kindergartener for most of my life. And all of it lost its lustre in 2016 as I sunk deep into the depths of my heart—without a guide, without a map, without a truth. I drank a lot. I still went to Christmas parties, I think, but I had just moved to a new city so I didn’t really have a community. I kept up my 3-4 bumble dates per week. I went home with a few of them, and I cried myself to sleep most of the nights I was alone. I hadn’t started a yoga practice yet, and I wanted nothing to do with my Bible. I had no grounding ritual or source of Light in the darkest point of the year.

I was utterly in the dark, and the impossibility of imagining Light in the midst of my darkness made me so angry I was intolerable to people who tried to love me and encourage me, and I was a stranger to myself. The lack of Christmas comfort and joy was disorienting to me, and I was forced to reckon with yet another loss. I’d lost God. I’d lost my faith. I’d lost my community. I’d lost my sense of identity, my best friend, my hope, and now I’d even lost my favorite time of year.

And then the song “I heard the bells on Christmas day” began to play. I’m sure I’d never paid attention to the words before that moment, and as I did, I was given words that softened my aching, fearful heart. It didn’t hurt any less, but I wasn’t alone.

I started hearing the song everywhere that year—I even went to my brother’s house for Christmas, and as I opened up the carol book on the piano, it fell open to the same song. I played and sang in the haze of red wine, while my family watched Hallmark movies downstairs. I was alone, and yet somehow in the company of at least one man, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who’d written the words comforting my cold heart 150 years ago.

That Christmas was heavy for me. I don’t remember much of it because I’m an enneagram 7 and I am remarkably skilled at blocking out unhappy memories. But the next year was only slightly better, as my faith began to fall back into place, but I found myself in church as a child again, learning the liturgical calendar and still making shaky attempts to reconcile my doubts with my newfound spiritual practice in the mystical side of Christianity. I experienced my first Christmas Eve midnight mass and I was newly in love with the man who invited me to it. But I still felt a jaded resistance to the unbridled joy around me, and Christmas didn’t seem any different than any other time of the year to me—I still had a deep desire to get Christmas right, and I was too fresh in my new tradition to feel confident about what right meant.

The next year I was crushed from a breakup, and had to scrape myself up off the ground just to get through the season. A soft blanket and a golden doodle who loves me were my morning graces, and my thoughts swirled 24 hours a day to try to heal my broken heart faster. My friends and family supported me as I grieved my way through Christmas yet again.

And here we are. 2019. I have my bearings in my faith, I have direction in my life. I have people who love me in grief and joy, tears and play, and I have a deeper and wider Love for Christ than I ever have before. This year I can feel a little bit of my Christmas cheer returning as we all agree, no matter our tradition or beliefs, that Light shines brightest in the darkness.

Here’s the point of all of this: Christmas is a time when we all encounter a lot of “shoulds”: how we should feel, what we should believe, everyone has an opinion about commercialism and what Christmas is “really” about. —what it should feel like, what we should believe or think or want…it’s a time we measure our lives by what we thought it “should” be like by now…what the year behind us “should” have brought into our lives, and instead of gratitude, we set ourselves up to face the disappointment we’ve been holding onto. We’re left, another year later, with our longings that things were different from how they are, in our own lives, in our relationships, in the world.

This is one of the reasons the idea of Advent is so powerful to me. The church calendar includes a 4-week period of longing. While the world around us hosts Christmas parties and celebrates the season, the church steps into a season where all we have is our desire that things were different.

Advent speaks to our longing. It gives room to be in the darkness. It gives us a season to grieve that things don’t seem to be as they should. Advent is a space for those of us who have been disappointed in this life.

And. Advent gives us an opportunity for hope. It is a longing and an anticipation that in the midst of darkness, a Light—the Light that created the Universe—will come, and will shine into the darkness. The Light of Life, the Light of Creation, The Light of the World, is Love, and it is our only hope.

There is hope in the nativity story of a young mother and father, who died to themselves—to their plans, to their reputation, to all of their “shoulds” in order to birth Love into the world. There were promises made to them about this child, and their willingness to hope and long for the fulfillment of those promises gave space for Love to enter in—outside of convention, outside of the demands of society, outside of the safety of their own plans and understanding.

So today, no matter your longing, your disappointment, no matter the state of your belief system or what your shoulds have told you—there is an opportunity for hope. Not because it makes sense or because you can even see it now at all, but because to hope for Love is to see Love. Love is what got you where you are. Love is the water you’re swimming in, the air you breathe. Love is in every heart around you, every eye you look into, every hand you touch. This Perfect Love is the Light of the World.

I’d like to leave you with a recording I made of this song that meant so much to me, because music is my favorite gift to give. May you find hope, peace, joy, and love as you long for Light to enter in.