A Christmas Card

            Christmas is the gladdest time of the year. Christmas is the saddest time of the year. This dichotomy has not gone unnoticed, not by me at any rate. I walk this dividing line every moment of the holiday season.  I think we all know to one degree or another that Christmas is not just a happy time. There is great sorrow among many at this time of year. There is still a reason for joy just as there is a reason for desperation. Both flow together like egg and nog or silver and bells. I don’t believe for a second they are mutually exclusive. They are yin and yang, they are shadow and light. Each one of us has it within us to be glad or to be sad but sometimes life decides for us. People place so many expectations on the Christmas season but most of us soon realize the futility of hoping. We are disappointed, by the day after. For the troubled soul, the festival holds little but the constant reminder that there sometimes is no Christmas spirit, no celebration, just nothing at all.

“Mary’s in a nursing home

She puts her favourite records on

Reminds her of the years long gone

Another Merry Christmas

Billy’s home from overseas

The pride of his whole family

Still fights a war that no one sees

Another Merry Christmas

It’s happy and sad

The good and the bad

Someone’s up and someone’s barely hanging on

It’s everything all at once

And if we’re honest enough

Everybody wants to be loved

Every year on Christmas Eve

Jill hangs four stockings, now just three

Wonders if there’ll ever be

Another Merry Christmas

Our painted old nativity

Is fragile like the lives we lead

Silently reminding me

God is with us

Another Merry Christmas”

(Another Merry Christmas, Amy Grant 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt-1Cm7Bf_g

            This Christmas morning, I beg you consider all the things you have to be thankful for. Just for a moment, may you feel the peace. It is my hope, my wish, that the Spirit of Christmas finds you and holds you to its own. For most of us, there is little in this holiday except for more pain, more grief, and more validation that this world can be a barren and lonely place. Let your heart be filled with light. Let it surround you. May you realize that even in despair there is hope. What damage would be done in taking this moment and seizing this moment? In the depths of it, be reminded. There is a message in it all. May this Christmas surround you, and keep you warm. May the lesson of Christmas stand so clear. May we know that God is with us.

Merry Christmas to you and all you know

and Happy New Year all the same

Photos

http://www.istockphoto.com/ca/photos/christmas-stocking?excludenudity=true&sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=christmas%20stocking

https://www.inverse.com/article/9214-the-science-of-sad-christmas-songs-or-why-christmas-shoes-gets-plays