When Christmas Joy is Tinged with Sadness

Last Christmas was my first Christmas after my Mom died. I cared for her for the last three years of her life as every part of her body and mind failed. I held her hand as she passed from this life to the next on Christmas Day. Sadness was the reality that tightened its vice around my heart as Christmas approached last year. I am a woman of faith, but even that did not save me from the pit of sorrow that surrounded me. My sadness brought me to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas and the call to transform my downheartedness into joy.

Christmas can be the most joyous and happy time of the year. The excitement of children is infectious, the decorations and lights a sight to behold, and the traditional Christmas songs fill the air with notes of wonder and excitement. Yet, for many, like me, Christmas holds a particular sadness that is pervasive and often overwhelming. Our sadness is very often born from the loss of loved ones and the loneliness that now lays as a shroud over the joy that is all around us.

I wish I could tell you there is a magic cure for the feelings of loss and loneliness that embrace many at this time of year. There is no quick fix; if there were, someone would have found it long before now. One thing is for sure, though, it does not help to push back the feelings of sadness, pretending they are not there. Trying to mask the feelings that weigh us down with a happy face only deepens the feelings of isolation and sorrow. 

Perhaps, a piece of the answer lies in seeing Christmas in a new and broader way. Christmas is about the birth of a child with all the wonder that birth brings. As we remember the birth of the child, Jesus, we commemorate the birth of love unsurpassed and irrepressible in our world. His birth was a moment when time stopped, and God touched the world with the very depth of his outrageously extravagant love. God’s love born in the child Jesus was not just for a moment but for all time, for all eternity. His love echoes throughout the centuries and touches the very depth of our beings. In a very tangible way, we know God’s loving touch through those we are blessed to love in our lives.

When we experience the Christmas holiday with all its joy, perhaps the answer is not in pushing away the sadness but instead in remembering and embracing the love that graced our lives and knowing with unwavering certainty that love is not gone; it is transformed. The child born in a simple manger to a peasant family grew to be the man who embodied the fullness of the love of God. We should not allow ourselves to see the birth of the child Jesus at Christmas without also understanding the life, death, and resurrection of the man. In our celebration of the remembrance of his birth, we do not celebrate a moment; we embrace a lifetime; we espouse eternity. When we see the baby and hear the melodies of “O Holy Night,” we must strain to hear beyond the notes that capture a moment so that we can hear the symphony of a life lived in love and the final promise, “I am with you always even until the end of time.”

Those we have loved and who have gone before us have been swept up into the arms of our outrageously loving God. The commemoration of the birth of the child Jesus at Christmas is the birth of that love remembered. It is a joy-filled reminder to us of how God has touched our lives with the very depth of his amazing love through the lives of those we have loved and who have loved us. The recollection of the birth of the child Jesus is a call from all eternity to our heavy hearts that love lives on and that those we have loved are now born again with this child. They are born again from all eternity to remind us of God’s great love and to echo in our hearts, in their own voice, the final words of Jesus, “I am with you always, even to the end of time.”

It is my prayer for you and for me this Christmas, when sadness seems on the verge of overwhelming, that in every Christmas melody we hear, we will hear the echo of the love of God proclaimed. In the laughter and the merriment, we will know and believe the promise of God that those we have loved and who have gone before us into His loving embrace are singing out their eternal love for us. May God bless us this Christmas with peace of heart and a sure knowledge of His infinite and outrageous love for us and those we love.

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen

*Edited and reprinted by request