Blue Christmas

Seasons come and go, but not always on a schedule. Our society wants to schedule the season of Joy. We want to put merriment on the calendar so that we can prepare for it. In many cases, this arrangement makes perfect sense.  For thousands more people Christmas joy has been eagerly anticipated until recently. Despite its joys, Christmastime can evoke feelings of hurt for some individuals experiencing difficult life situations. Losing a loved one, especially on Christmas, being let go from a job or financial struggles in general, dealing with broken relationships, suffering from an illness or loneliness can cause depression during the holidays.

The traumas of life can make us feel immune to the “Christmas spirit” at times. Imagine how the world looks when we are out of sync with the season. It seems like the whole world is out of balance. Someone flipped a switch and we are invited to be “merry” six times a day. Radio stations have changed their programming to meet the new demand for celebration. We are shopping for groceries to a serenade of expectation – “have a Holly Jolly Christmas. It’s the best time of the year…” The firemen put antlers on engine #3. Everywhere we look, there is a fashion resistant sweater, a house covered in blinking lights, another tray of cookies and fudge, cards filling the mailbox, trees being lit, commercials, even church embraces this pervasive sentiment. It certainly is not for a lack of trying; but, some of us just can’t get on the jolly train.

The questions begin to mount both internally and from the world at large. Is there something wrong? Are we so different that we should avoid contact with the cheery world at all costs? Should we be “faking it” just so our families don’t worry?  Are we ungrateful – unwilling to pay the debt of cheer to a deserving community? Are we changed forever? Are we doomed to spending months every year as a gloomy contrast to the world of twinkling red and green? Should we seek help for our conditions of hopelessness? Am I not capable of hope anymore?

Even the tales of Christmas woe are a little oversimplified. Scrooge Mc Duck needed to be cured of greed. Ebenezer suffered from being out of touch with the common suffering of humanity. The Grinch had never witnessed an unexplainable love. So when the world is exposed to sorrow in the season of joy, the natural assumption is that there is something “wrong” with the person who is experiencing sadness – we just need the right “cure”: we can ”fix it.”

The fact is, we just need to create space. Sadness is not hopelessness. Grief does not pay any attention to the calendar. If we are honest, we can recognize that many of the deepest experiences of hope, love, and faith are discovered in the depth of lamentation. We are emotional beings. Our understanding of the richness of life seems to come through the emotional highs, but this point of view is an emotional illusion. Emotional highs are in and of themselves evidence of emotional lows. We cannot cherish one without the other. When we give ourselves permission to be present for the sadness in our lives the door is wide open for life and life abundant.

 Diving into a season of hope with eager longing doesn’t need to look the same for everyone. Some celebrate with green and red. Some want to glitter with gold and silver. It can be just as valid to welcome the season of Christmas with the color blue. It is fertile ground for hope when we ring in the new year with a tear instead of a kiss. 

When we come to worship, we need to bring our real selves. We need to be able to say that I am here. I am completely here and completely welcome with my sadness, my loneliness, my frustration, my illness, my sorrow. We need to be able to recognize that we are here together – there is space for your complete emotional being and mine together. We need to know that God is also here – God that suffered, God that prayed, God that died, & God that lives, resurrected and calling us beloved. Worship is communion with God and one another. Worship welcomes me in both sadness and joy.

Blue Christmas will be celebrated at 7:00pm on December 21^st, 2013 in the sanctuary of the United Methodist Church of Merced (899 Yosemite Parkway). This is often called a service of the longest night because it is the longest night of the year.  Yet, this is also the day that the season of encroaching darkness gives way to the season of encroaching light. We will acknowledge the emotional wilderness of sorrow and grief. We will give each other personal space to hold, identify, and recognize the weight our sorrows. We will honor this way of being with prayer, candle lighting, communion, and song. We will know Emmanuel – God with us. Not conditionally upon our behavior or our attitude; but, God with us in all of the seasons of our lives. Hope: It’s what’s for Christmas.

Praise be to God,

pg