Not-So-Merry Christmas

by Doug Floyd

As the lights twinkle and the songs echo holly jolly sentiments, Blue Christmas resounds
in the hearts of many lonely people. In this shared season of celebration, our emotions
feel the weight of nostalgia: memories of people and Christmases past.

Before we moved back South, my grandma came and visited us one Christmas. And I
still remember recording on a reel-to-reel, “Grandma is Coming to Town.” Right down
grandma lane!

She won’t be coming to Christmas this year. My grandparents have been gone for many
years.

It is during Christmas that many people remember the pain of lost love ones from the
distant past or recent past. Even in the holiday cheer, this loss brings tears and for some
despair. The “most wonderful time of the year” doesn’t feel very wonder-filled for some
people.

We are surrounded by people who quietly struggle with sadness and loss during the
time when they feel pressure to have a merry little Christmas. Instead of bringing holiday
cheer, Christmas Carols and Christmas parties leave them with a deeper sense of
loneliness and alienation.

While some people grieve the loss of loved ones, others feel the particular pain of
broken relationships. Many grope through dark clouds of bad memories from the spirit of
Christmas past. While most popular holiday songs stay near the surface of a Winter
Wonderland, some break beneath the ice and tap the seasonal sadness that clouds
hearts and minds.

As we listen, we discover people who don’t fit the shiny, happy Christmas pattern. There
are plenty of sad, drunk and miserable people at Christmas. They agonize under the
cold dark winter night absent a bright shining light and angels proclaiming, “Goodwill to
men.”

Sufjan Stevens captures this bleak feeling in his song, “That Was The Worst Christmas
Ever!” He starts out with images of shoveling snow and sledding down the hillside, but
soon the song descends into the father yelling and throwing gifts into the wood stove.

Then he replaces a familiar heartwarming refrain with,

“Silent night, holy night,
Silent night, nothing feels right.”
The holy wondrous awe of Christmas is replaced with an awkward, painful silence in a
house where nothing feels right.

In another song, Sufjan turns this searching eye upon himself as he sings, “Did I Make
You Cry at Christmas?” In one poignant verse, he sings about the aftermath of a
Christmas fight,

I stay awake at night

After we have a fight
I'm writing poems about you
And they aren't very nice
I didn't mean to yell
I said I couldn't tell
I only grabbed your wrist
Or would you rather we kissed?

In the final couplet, we see the intertwining and love and pain that is so common in
human relationships. We often inflict wounds upon the very people we love with words
and actions that divide instead of uniting. Humans are drawn to love and are not
capable of loving truly and fully. We hurt and are hurt.

The stresses of Christmas events may increase the likelihood of our conflicts, turning
the “Peace on Earth” into holy war. This rhythm of pain and grief echoes across
countless homes and hearts every year. This year, we might pause to remember the
hurting, afflicted, grieving souls at Christmas.

The church tradition has not ignored this pain. Songs like “Coventry Carol” memorialize
the darkest images of Christmas. The simple refrain, “Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.
By, by, lully, lullay” laments the death of innocent children. This medieval hymn
rehearses the terrible slaughter of the innocents. Even as the world was rejoicing at
Jesus’ birth, mothers wept over the senseless murder of their children by the tyrant
Herod.

The more you explore the great songs of Christian tradition, the more you’ll discover a
range of songs that explore doubt, the darkness of winter, and even dismay. The
popular, “God Rest You Merry, Gentleman” encourages the listener not to dismay. In
fact, the song is not addressing “merry gentleman” but simply gentleman, and it blesses
them with the greeting, “God rest you merry!”

Joy is not something we manufacture, it is a gift, and deep joy is only fully revealed in
the midst of deep suffering. The more we reflect on suffering at Christmas, the more we
may agree with Chesterton when he said that, “Any one thinking of the Holy Child as
born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely
a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.”

He is simply echoing the earliest Christmas hymn of all. Long before “Jingle Bells” and
“Winter Wonderland,” way back before “Low How A Rose Ere Blooming” and “In the
Bleak Mid-Winter Night,” a song was sung that still resonates in every heart.

In the earliest Christmas carol of all, Mary sang a song of exaltation to the child she was
soon to bear. Listen to the words,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” (Luke 1:46-55; ESV)

Mary exclaims the glory of a God who truly is “God with us.” The God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob enters human history in His Son, Jesus. He remembers the oppressed,
humiliated, hungry and poor people of Israel. He enters the suffering of the Jews, and in
doing so, He enters into the suffering of every human heart.

Christmas reveals God’s absolute willingness to identify with us our lowest estate.
“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows.” (Is 53:4)

Christmas cheer is not built on an empty artifice of happy thoughts and mythical
creatures who magically make the world a better place. Christmas cheer is rooted in the
deep darkness of Easter agony. Our God has not forsaken us. He comes to the lowly,
the despairing, the grieving and the forgotten.
He who conquered death and the grave, has conquered the haunts of Christmases
past. The memories of loss and pain are not outside of His rule. Even in the silent nights
where “nothing is right,” He dwells.

I know. I have met Him in the deepest, darkest pains of my soul. In those places, I
discovered His faithful love in a way, I never knew before.

Whether we rejoice or suffer during this season of light, let us join in the songs of hope
that resound across the ages. In these rememberings of the baby Jesus, we discover
the God whose rule of love cannot be thwarted even by death.

I think back to Sufjan’s “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever,” and am reminded of one
line buried in the midst of the wintry mix.

“In time the snow will rise, in time the snow will rise,
In time the Lord will rise, in time the Lord will rise.”

Even now the chill of winter grief melts beneath the burning love of the Resurrected
Son.